Morendo

Apparently a dead president lived here, but I can't believe that.

"More like, he came here to die!"
Somebody laughed, but it was not the mood we were all in.
We were ushered to a series of sagging two story cabins made from stringy dark wood, and Jimmy Carter's floating head was emblazoned over one of the cabin's doorways.

I clutched my violin, but the comfort it usually offered had been sucked away. It felt like a dead wooden baby. Unfortunately, one of the tour buses had tipped over on the muddy road, crushing several instruments and the entire violoncello section. Luckily the residents (or rather the denizens) wouldn't mind the wheezing broken instruments, because everything seemed to follow in that general direction. The trees were fierce and dark, and when you talked loudly, the branches cut up your voice into ribbons. I can't imagine what an attempt at melody would sound like.
"Ha, have fun sleeping with Jimmy, you guys!"
"How can we not?" I called back.

Myself and four other players were left with the Jimmy cabin, and I had been cloistered into the very room that bore the man. The cabin consisted of a dark hallway with doorways in the wall indicating sleeping chambers. There were curtains instead of doors. We were all close to death from the chill.
"This is a mood killer." One of my friends called out cynically from his dark domain.
"How am I supposed to nail the principal violist now?"

Sometimes I prayed to Jimmy before I went to bed.
Sometimes I swear he would wink at me, too.

The man is dead.
"He was my ray of sunshine."
Eyeliner was running and we stood like orphans in a cold circle with our instruments.
In all honesty, we had no clue whether our conductor was dead, but he was rather late. The blacks and greys and black-greys of the scenery were getting to us.
"Look." She pointed to a small cottage on the lakeside, which was a pearl of blue in the black skeletons of the forest.
"We haven't been there yet, perhaps he's hiding?"
"That would be odd."
The four of us who hadn't been crushed or frozen in the night began traipsing with speed to the cottage, which glowed slightly with warmth by the icy lake.

When we opened the cottage door, we found a sprawling office building inside. Workers hummed down the hallway dressed in sharp suits, papers rustled and phones rang behind doors. I surely felt useless and chaotic just by standing in the doorway of the beehive. The whole place seemed rather unfinished. Some walls weren't there, and spindly black trees knocked themselves into the building with sharp branches. The floor was not tiled in some places, and there were elegant Greco-Roman decorative pillars in random locations in the hallway.

My conductor was standing near a reception desk, talking to a woman with a headset. I was shocked. His baton was in hand, and his forehead wrinkled and un-wrinkled at the woman's comments. We went up to them. When we saw him, his face lit up.
"Kids, so good to see you!"
I pressed my violin case into my stomach.
"We've been looking for you," I said.
My conductor shook his head, cascading his dramatic hairstyle.
"That is my old life, my purpose is here now. I design pool flotation devices!"
He raised a hand.
There was a hot tub in the ground to his left, with several multi-coloured balls bobbing in the sulphurous water.
The flutist behind me let out a sniffle.
"How?" I asked.
The conductor leaned forward, his face nearly touching mine.
"It's time for you to leave."

We walked slowly against the tide of flowing workers, endlessly carrying out their tasks. We were hopelessly lost in a sea of foreign elements.

Eventually the flow of workers ceased.
Then the walls started becoming scarce, full of trees.
Then the tiles disappeared, bringing up soft forest dirt.

It was very cold, more than it had ever been. I had just my ailing violin to keep me warm, and some type of burning disappointment.