The melody followed Alden home, not loudly, not insistently, but with the quiet persistence of something that refused to be ignored. By the time he unlocked his apartment door, the three notes had replayed so many times in his mind that they no longer felt like sound. They felt like pressure—subtle, steady, and deliberate.
His apartment greeted him with its usual indifference. The air smelled faintly of coffee grounds and old paper. A single lamp near the window cast a dull yellow glow across the room, illuminating the smallness of everything. Nothing had changed since morning. The same unwashed mug sat near the sink. The same jacket hung carelessly over the chair. The same stillness occupied the corners. And yet, the room felt different, as though it were holding its breath.
He closed the door behind him and stood there for a moment, listening. No melody now. No phantom piano keys threading through the air. Only the faint hum of the refrigerator and distant traffic filtering in through thin walls. The silence should have reassured him. Instead, it felt incomplete.
Alden crossed the room slowly and crouched beside his bed. He did not consciously remember placing anything important beneath it, but his body moved with quiet certainty. His fingers brushed against dust before making contact with cardboard. He pulled out a small box, its edges worn, its lid barely secured by aging tape that had long ago surrendered its grip.
He hesitated before opening it, as if expecting something inside to shift the balance of his carefully arranged life.
The contents were unremarkable at first glance: old photographs from years he rarely revisited, folded pages of scribbled lyrics, a cheap harmonica he had once insisted he would master. Beneath these items, resting flat at the bottom as though intentionally hidden, lay a cassette tape.
He stared at it for several seconds before picking it up.
The plastic casing was scratched, the label slightly peeling. Across its surface, written in familiar but younger handwriting, were the words: Midnight Memories – The Forgotten Melody.
The sight of it unsettled him more than the melody itself.
He sat back against the side of the bed, the cassette turning slowly in his hand. He did not remember recording it. He did not remember deciding on such a dramatic title. But he remembered the version of himself who might have done so. At seventeen, he had believed music was not merely expression but escape. He had spent countless nights bent over a secondhand keyboard, layering hesitant notes into something he hoped would sound like certainty.
That boy had been earnest. Reckless with hope. Convinced that if he could complete the right melody, it would anchor him.
Alden no longer recognized that version of himself.
He set the cassette on the desk beneath the lamp and reached back into the box. Folded sheets of staff paper lay beneath it. He lifted them carefully and unfolded the top page. The first three notes were written clearly at the beginning of the staff.
They matched perfectly.
His pulse quickened.
Below those notes, the composition continued for several measures—simple progressions, nothing extravagant, but deliberate. Then, halfway down the page, the ink stopped. The remaining staff lines stretched blank to the bottom margin, untouched and waiting.
The absence felt intentional, not careless. It was not scratched out or erased. It was simply unfinished.
Alden remained seated, staring at the blank space as if the missing notes might reveal themselves under scrutiny. The realization formed slowly, unwelcome but undeniable. He had not forgotten the melody.
He had abandoned it.
And perhaps, in abandoning it, he had also abandoned the part of himself that believed in finishing things.
Outside his window, a siren wailed briefly before dissolving into the night. The world continued with its usual momentum, unaware that something quiet and unresolved had begun resurfacing in a small apartment five stories above the street.
Alden gathered the sheets and placed them back into the box, though he kept the cassette on his desk. Its presence altered the room in subtle ways, like an old photograph returned to a wall long stripped bare.
He stood and moved to the window, looking down at the city once more. Somewhere between the traffic lights and the passing shadows, midnight waited patiently. The melody would return. He was certain of it now.
Unfinished things always do.