Hard Sun (open)

[Jesse St. Johns]

Hard Sun

"Once I stood to lose her
When I saw what I had done
Bound down and flew away the hours
Of her garden and her sun

So I tried to warn her
I turned to see her weep
Forty days and forty nights
And it's still coming down on me

There's a big
A big hard sun
Beating on the big people
In a big hard world..."

The guitar wailed in pain and my voice struggled to keep from cracking. A chill breeze sliced along the courtyard and my locks were sent whipping across my face. I heard footsteps passing by, some heavy, some light. Some stopped. I heard voices but couldn't make out what they said. I was barely there. My fingers bounced across the neck, tightening and loosing strings on cue. The song pierced the unusually cool summer air and filled the yard.

My father had taught me this song. He was a bluesman by trade but he'd forgotten more songs than most people learned in a lifetime. He knew them all. And Hard Sun was one of the last ones he taught me before the storm. I'd learned quite a few since then, wrote my own blues and my own music. But I always came back to ones like this when times were tough.

I was in the Paragon Institute now. Training Hell. If heaven has a halfway land like purgatory, hell must have one too. And I can't imagine it being too different. It's not truly evil. But there's no good here either. Fighting, betrayal, lust, wrath, they all make appearances at some point or another.

I sang on, the song falling off my tongue and jumping off my lips. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. Thinking about my father, my mother. Thinking about where I was now. Trapped. Nowhere else to go till I graduate, two years from now. I didn't belong here, I wasn't like them. Was I? Make the best of it they always say...but it's so hard. A hard sun.

"God...what am I doing here...?"

[Gareth Rahkier]

Paragon's turning out to be a nice gig for me. For the last few days, I've done whatever sinful pleasure the school had to offer: a bunch of fights here and there, an underground gambling match down in the school's southern bathroom, bashing in some loudmouth's face with his beloved baseball bat, telling one group of punks that another group was shitting on their names and ended up smoking a cigarette as they bloodied up the hallway, I even shared the janitor closet with some sweet gang girl for a few minutes and left her with the place smelling a shit load nicer than it had - at least, in that sense.

Oh yeah, I was lovin' the Corporal Punishment System! Just last class I was bitching at my professor to bash in some dumb kid's neck! He didn't listen of course - so I took care of the little prick myself - but best of all, the teacher didn't do a damn thing! Ah, that was a good feeling when I was leaving the school's main building to have a breather outside. I was all shits and giggles, shaking and grinning like mad. Absolutely great.

And then some asshole had to start playing depressing shit, and my mood was sinking.

I stood by some black guy with a nice looking guitar putting all his soul into some song that I had never heard in my life - and I planned on never hearing it again, because it was way too smooth for my tastes. This guy was putting all his passion into the thing to, what with his killer skills at his guitar and his face squinting like he was gonna cry. It was nuts. I'd probably have felt sad if I didn't give a shit about art. But it was enough to ruin my good moment - I was actually thinking now instead of letting my beast roll around. So now I actually had to act like a thinking human being. Goddammit.

Still, even though I was frowning and glaring down at this guy as he played his music with a cig hanging from my mouth, some little emotional comment got me curious. He was asking himself - or God, if he actually believed in such a fucking joke - why he was attending Paragon Institute. I thought it was kind of a stupid question; why leave a place where you could fight and fuck whenever you damn well wanted? It made no sense to me. And the guy didn't look weak at all to me, save for how he wasted his time on music on whatnot. Art wasn't worth the time, at least I thought so. And if I thought so, that's how it ought to be.

I decided to amuse the fellow though, so I let my face mold into a grin and held my left hand to the cigarette in my mouth, blowing out smoke and a blunt verbal number of words followed, literally spilling from me as I gazed at him, "That's a good question black boy. If you're not tough enough to be at Paragon, why aren't you playing your little music at weak ol' Hircine?"

I realized that the guy would probably hear something like a thin German accent - do we even have accents? Hell if I know what Americans think of the Fatherland's tongue - and a voice so confident and proud that he'd be smitten with fear to look at me. He should, anyway. Who knows with people these days, especially artists. Pah.

[Jesse St. Johns]

Now that cut through the static. Just as I was wrapping up the song a voice made it through my haze and brought me back. He called me black boy. I didn't like him already. He said if I wasn't tough I should move to Hircine. His voice sounded vaguely German, like a WWII movie with Nazis speaking English. I tended to pick up on stuff like that. Call it attention to detail. I called it knowing what was going on around you. And I finally realized I had let my guard down while playing and this cig smoking European fellow could have blasted me at any time. I chastized myself silently and replied. I didn't attempt to hide my Southern accent. He hadn't really hidden his.

"Cause I got no choice but ta be here. I leave, cops pick me up, I go back to Babylon. Prison. So till I's graduate, I'm stuck in Paragon."

I pulled my guitar off my knee set it between my legs, hanging my hands off the neck and leaning against it like a walking stick. My dreadlocks hid much of my face but I turned and peered up towards the man, ropey strands falling away. He didn't seem violent, from first glance anyway. But he did seem confident, almost smug. I'd seen the look before and it didn't truly impress me anymore. But I wasn't about to push my luck.

"Why are you here then? And don't call me black boy."

Okay, so I did push my luck with that last bit. I said it harshly, verging on threatening. I hated people bringing up my skin color right away. I hated people bringing it up to begin with. And this guy had not earned any right to call my music little.

The conversation was not off to a good start.

[Rick Green]

Here I am standing on the Paragon grounds chewing the idea over, tasting it if you will. After a minute of thinking it through I had to say it didn’t taste good at all. After moving out from New York I had thought that I would be attending Hircine. Turned out that wasn’t they way things were meant to be. No as it turned out I was destined to be a member of the not so prestigious Paragon institute. Which from the look of it that’s exactly what it was, a mental institute.

As I found my self pondering my terrible fate I noticed the rhythmic sounds of an all too familiar instrument. The guitar sounded great and voice that accompanied it gave the impression of someone who’d seen a few things. I found myself enjoying the bluesy sound of it and wished I could play half as decent as whoever was strumming. After a few more notes I decided I had to find whoever it was.

It didn’t take long to find the one I was looking for. He stood out easily enough, but not because of his skin color. The fact that the dude was built and looked like a professional athlete was the immediate attention getter. However what stood out most was the way he played the guitar and sang. I’ve played my fair share of the heavenly instrument and seen some of the best work their magic. Though it’d been a long time since I’d seen someone poor that much emotion into playing.

I was about to make my approach when all of a sudden some guy came walking right into the picture. Immediately I didn’t like the guy. The way he spoke to the guitar player suggested a smugness that bordered on racism. Plus the cigarette just instantly irritated me, I didn’t know why. Probably cause the old man used to smoke those disgusting cigarettes around me all the time. Despite all the things that pissed me off about him, the guy seemed interesting to me. He was slick almost without trying it seemed.

The guitar player had stopped his playing and placed the guitar between his legs. I could see the annoyance in those gray eyes of his. He responded in kind telling the other guy not to call him black. And with that I suddenly just wanted to back away from this situation. The tension was starting to build and from my experience going to a New York school I knew what happened next.

Still I couldn’t help but stand there. Ether out of curiosity to meet the guitar player or to see what happened next, I didn’t know.