The dog bark was fading with the dying of the day, and with it, the whistle man felt everything slipping from above. Maybe I don’t mean slipping. I mean rising away, like steam. Everything was rising, and it was already far beyond the reach of the whistle man. He squared himself, put his hands in his pockets and looked straight ahead, into the sea. Music was pounding behind him. The music felt powerful to the whistle man, physically powerful, like it could lift a table. It felt natural too. It felt natural like the crashing of the waves and the croaking of the gulls. The whistle man wasn’t feeling natural though; he felt anxious. I feel calm, but I don’t feel natural, he thought to himself. The whistle man didn’t care much for feeling natural anyway; it was unnatural to him.

A tiger ran past the whistle man.

Strange! He thought to himself, but then he considered this reaction. He filibustered. He dwelt on the thought for a few seconds (although you can’t time thoughts!). A string of unspoken words formed in his head (Maybe the words weren’t words or even in his head, but we‘ll allow it for the sake of the sentence.) But what is strange? He thought. Except for that with which I am not familiar?

How liberal! How benevolent!

Perhaps now you have at least a vague image of the whistle man in your mind? Yes?

On to the tiger then!

The tiger was playful, but you know tigers, they’re so unpredictable. It’s in the tense muscles, the vacant tail wagging, and those precise, calculated head movements. Here though, all that needs to be said is that the tiger was playful. Furthermore, he was receptive to the whistle man’s company.

“You must be the whistle man!” He said. The whistle man wasn’t unpopular, he just felt as if he hadn’t been given the chance to be popular.

“How did you-”

“You’re big on Myspace!” the tiger interrupted.

The whistle man felt happy! He relished the rare occasions on which he was recognized. He acted casual.

“Yeah,” he said. “But why are you here?”

“I’m in the marines. I’ve been fighting in the war, but now I’m on leave.” The tiger was proud and pointed his nose up towards the whistle man’s chin.

“Have you felt scared in the war?” the whistle man asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ve felt scared too.”

Why was the whistle man being so open to the tiger? Perhaps it was because he truly had been very anxious recently. He felt as if a great and dark wave had washed over him. No, maybe it would be better to say the whistle man felt as if he’d endured a dream in which he had embraced a dead relative and then woke up feeling half dead himself. He felt like he’d been reminded of something sad and destructive. He felt truly, even more anxious. There was hope though. He continued:

“-but to hear a tiger marine has been scared in the war has settled me somewhat. I will be honest and precise: I’m scared of the future. I’m on the edge of a dark yet-to-be-inhabited wood and everything looks so desolate and so empty.”

The tiger found comfort in his stranger-companion’s words. He rolled onto his back and listened to the collective sounds of his environment. The whistle man did the same. It was true he had felt anxious recently, but in the presence of the tiger marine he felt different. The world was once so colorful, he thought to himself.

He gave a deep sigh. As he breathed in, the whistle man imagined himself ingesting the whole ocean and all its strange secrets. Then, as he released his breath, he felt his eyes close under the burden of his strange thoughts and the whistle man fell into a sad and dizzy haze.

It was true he had felt anxious recently, but the sound of the sea and the scared tiger marine induced a calmness in him. It wasn’t a happy calm, but a sinister, empty sort of feeling, in his head (for the sentence, please!) he likened it to standing in a cave during a rainstorm.

As the whistle man drifted deeper into himself. he felt the throbbing rip of the music fade. The jarring guitar riffs and clapping snare drum dissolved into nothing and left a lone voice singing a sort of pop nursery rhyme. The voice was child-like. He turned to face the voice but instead watched the street lights as they dimmed until they were like fireflies, which proceeded to uproot and fly off somewhere until they were nothing. Next, he saw all the cars that were racing up and down the boardwalk stop. The whistle man watched as they turned off their lights and engines and stood still leaving an eerie, empty world of no noise and no fuss except that ancient, but misunderstood, roar of the ocean, and the child-like voice of the band. It was singing some rhyme:

“Pull down the blinds

block what’s left of the stars.”

The whistle man was torn. The words meant everything and nothing to him. He didn’t know whether his blind had been lifted or not. Maybe it had been pulled down further? Perhaps his anxiety had sent him into some lonely psychotic haze? The whistle man lay like some wretched Ophelia as the tide pulled in and, first, bathed and licked at his feet, but then slowly and sadistically crept up his body until he was half-drowned in salt water. The tiger had long abandoned him.

The music continued:

“YOUR LIFE IS A SONG

BUT NOT THIS ONE.”