Last Entry

by Michael O’Neal

Item 992s-033

FILE #7822.PV- SS2 - Ref. "Dictated Audio Diary/Author: Nesmon, Joel A." Date of Entry: 2025 (unknown day, presumed February)

RECOVERED DATE:  08/12/2025 by Operative *****REDACTED*****

INITIAL POST COPIED/PASTED FROM PREVIOUS ENTRY IN LOG SEE *****REDACTED***** FOR REFERENCE

Music isn’t dead. Music sets us free. In the symphony, I can hear my soul, the siren song that’s trapped my soul without ears. They’re gone, replaced with something else. Still I listen, follow, because I have to listen. No longer free. A cell. Some piece of a greater whole, new, ancient, both far and close. Am I a god? No, I’m only one of the choir -- I’m one of the voices singing, silent yet screaming, in unison with the countless others, the pieces that create us. I am a warning.

‘Music isn’t dead. Just all except this whisper that once was me.’

START OF FINAL ENTRY OF NESMON, JOEL A. [presumed author]

I heard the voice, those lyrics I used in one of my songs, in a dream, some of the whisperer’s words that I could recall, others maybe made-up yet true to the meaning, I can’t remember anything right anymore.

Dreams, so many, so fast. Few at first, then over and over and over. Now I see nothing else. Dark, deep, an endless gulf ahead and below, no sight at first, then with more dreams, they gave me their eyes, god’s eyes and...

I knew the world I left kept going above me, another country, another world. No sun here, too deep. Just the voices. And the shadows in the dark that swam around me, closer, calling.

I was a singer. I think I was.

Yes, I was. I was. I am. Rock music, different. Cult status, or strange, like the occult, alternative mainstream. Our...my band was called *****REDACTED*****.

I played arenas. I heard my voice sing to me on the radio -- sing these things I thought I dreamt.

Was I calling them to me? Or did they choose me first? Did those faceless masses, anyone that heard...were they seen when they sang along? Did the dreams find them, the endless dreams...

Shapes in the waters. With my new eyes, I still couldn’t see them clearly, or the huge silhouettes were too far away, bigger than anything that should be alive, worlds unto themselves. Then the waters around me grew colder, knives grabbed my arm, drug me deeper with them. Then I’d wake, write what I remembered. One day, I remembered voices.

In the mirror today, what was left of the skin on my shoulder sloughed off. Didn’t have to scratch, not like at first when the skin grew hard, a rash like shingles, it bled once, not anymore, just dead. Alive underneath, new. I kept pulling. More flesh came off. I kept screaming, though I didn’t feel pain. Release. Rebirth. Renewal.

So thirsty, I can’t drink enough. All I think of is water, bathing in it, falling into the sea, swimming until I’d drown but find I breathe, darker and deeper until I see the shapes...deeper and deeper until I hear the song.

My song. My true song. What I was meant to sing.

No, not me. We were meant to sing. Yes. I don’t think it was always me. God, I can’t remember anymore!

Last night — no not last night. The days, don’t recall the sun, all run together. Can’t recall, don’t think I’ve slept in a week? All melting. In that dream, the last, I saw — me. Us.

Together, our siren, my sister and my brother though I didn’t know them, before — I know them now because We are meant as One. They had parts of them missing. They melted. My skin kept coming off until I slid my hands inside and ripped the rest away. Our bodies fused, the veins intertwined, an ink-like fog bled through the waters and it changed us. My howl was theirs. Our legs became thick, one trunk, our feet rooted into the seabed, where we were placed, where we were meant to be.

I can’t stop laughing. My house is on the beach. I can hear the ocean while I say this.

I can hear the song calling me.

Everything gone save the choir, an unknown conductor leads the mad symphony, doesn’t make sense, an idiot, a blind madman waving a stick until he strikes us, makes us scream, until the music swells, until it tears me apart, reshaping.

A new birth from the corpse of my old. My hell. My salvation.

Someone says I will survive the new world. I will scream out its warnings. I call others to me. I am its sentinel. We are its proclaimer. The voice of a god made in the flesh, after its own images that speaks its madness, its truth, its life through me, through us, my sister, my brother, we scream, symphony erupts, the sea, the stars, one heart, one

mind, one eternal soul, help me, where am I going, I see it, dark and deep, I go, the voices are everywhere, we are the voice, help, I scream the god’s name, I see them coming for

us, I scream...’

[indistinguishable, voice of Nesmon, Joel A. grows faint, presumably leaves his residence while computer kept recording, audio log timeouts; unverified sounds in static, unverified, first attributers deciphered SEE *****REDACTED*****, within static was heard/noted *****REDACTED***** further verification/testing needed, FLAGGED for follow-up]

END OF AUDIO LOG

NO KNOWN RECORD OF NESMON, JOEL A. AFTER FILE ENTRY PRESUMED DECEASED

FLAGGED FOR FOLLOW-UP W/ PHOENIX DES. *****REDACTED***** END FILE #7822.PV