The Song In His Head

Allister awoke one morning with some mysterious fragment of a song wafting through his mind's halls. It was a distant song, attached to some memory past, but held tight to the fabric of his current senses. It was only the chorus (he could not remember the verses). But, it clung to Allister and his conscious and massaged every nerve to a calm that pushed out a whistle from his lips.

And, throughout the day, he could not help but whistle. In between sips of his morning coffee, he whistled. Opening the front door, he whistled. Crossing the street, he whistled. Tripping and skinning his knee, he whistled. Dusting off his pants, he whistled. Tipping his hat, he whistled. On and on and throughout his day, he whistled until he fell asleep.

And the next morning it was still there.

And the next.

And the next, as well.

The song remained.

And Allister could not place it. It was so familiar that it felt very near, like some recent day. And, yet, it was so unfamiliar that the day could only have been the day before never.

He searched high and low. He taught himself how to read music just so he could locate the piece and learn the rest. But, he could not find the sheet music.

He would stop absolute friends, absolute strangers, and all the absolutes in between and whistle the tune in hopes that they would recognize the song. No one did. But, many walked away whistling the song.

Allister remembered one particularly stern and apparently busy fellow who answered Allister's question, "Do you know this song?" with, "Never heard it." And that answer stuck with Allister for a while (not as long as the song, of course) because Allister felt it was irrelevant. It was, after all, quite possible that Allister had never heard the song before either. But, he still knew it.

And this carried on for some time, as these things tend to do, until one day Allister was resting on his favorite arm chair and the radio played a familiar tune. His tune. His mysterious tune.

The man on the radio had introduced it as a brand-new smash sensation.

And Allister was, of course, satisfied. He did not recognize the name of the song nor the name of its composer. And, in all honesty, Allister was never really sure if that composer had written the song on their own, if the song was a traditional melody passed along, or if someone had passed along Allister's whistle until it found the composer.

But, whatever the song's journey, it had finally found its verses.

.