A young woman wandered through a labyrinth comprised of geometrically perfect stones, stacked one atop another in various shapes—sometimes staircases leading to nowhere, other times overlapping archways. Each dead end was marked with a small fire, above which there was always a carved stone head. Whenever the young woman would reach one, she would camp out and begin again in the morning. The heads would speak to her at night.
One said, “Follow the sounds of Black Orpheus, plucking his guitar strings.”
Another said, “If Eurydice is gone, look for the sounds of a crying boy.”
Another one said, “If Orpheus is gone, look for silence.”
Another one said, “If there is only noise, look for Orfeu’s lyre.”
She went from corner to corner, until she found a new staircase that rose above all of the others, hanging over jagged rocks, surrounded by an endless body of water. The clouds hung under her feet, shrouding the entirety of the maze in fog. Sitting down and crossing her legs, the young woman waited for two weeks to see if the sky would clear. When it did not, she looked down at the sharp stone pool. She thought for a moment and returned down the steps, into the labyrinth, where she continued to wander, following the path of the cool stone walls. When she slept at each dead-end, they spoke to her.
One said, “Follow the sounds of Black Orpheus, plucking his guitar strings.”
Another said, “If Eurydice is gone, look for the sounds of a crying boy.”
Another one said, “If Orpheus is gone, look for silence.”
Another one said, “If there is only noise, look for Orfeu’s lyre.”
Every now and then, she would hear faint sounds of music. She imagined the young Brazilian man sitting against the clean-cut stone, playing his guitar, singing songs in search of Eurydice—which she would never hear—now dead, sleeping under the dirt, laying against the rabid underworld hounds.
—Mike Corrao is a student at the University of Minnesota studying Film and English. He was the artist in residence in 2016 for the Southern Theater. His work has appeared in publications such as Cleaver, Entropy, and decomP.