At 11PM, it was clear to her.
Without a word, she set her drink down, got off the couch, cut through her friends squished tight into the apartment, walked out the front door, across the street, through the yards of the neighborhood, and just kept walking.
At 11PM, she was granted a great wish.
Her skin seemed to lose its grip on her insides. She flung her arms open and opened her mouth to the sky. All was beautiful. All was song. She sang along. Through the dirt, she kept walking, kept dancing, waving her hands as if they dove through water, twisting her fingers like intricate instruments. The dark night, the smell of the grasshoppers, formed the set and soundtrack of her climactic movie scene. Her heart throbbed inside the casing of her ribs like it never had before. The temperature of her blood increased, exciting and soothing her at once.
At 11PM, it seemed her heart would burst.
Gratitude. Smiles. Laughter. She was a child in the arms of a protective father as she danced and walked through the tall grasses of the field. She swept her hand over the tops of the grasses, bending them, creating great ripples and pictures of motion. Her heart beat, her blood warmed, her muscles moved spontaneously. Ecstasy. All was beautiful.
At 11PM, she realized the end was near.
Insanity, that thief, had been waiting at the house window. As she spun, her arms open to the sky, her mouth wide open in song, she recalled the nights she had prayed, "When I do go crazy, let me hear music all the time."
At 11PM, her wish was granted.
At 11PM, she snapped.
She had left her friends without an explanation. The music called her out the door, down the steps, and into the field where she now swam in the long grasses, dancing to the music that dictated her pulse and pulled on the corpuscles of her blood and loosed her skin to let her tendons out. It promised her freedom. At last. At last the beat of the music would be the aural key to the prison of her body. The molecules of her body would lose their hold on each other and she would disintegrate into the air, dropping globules of music all over the ground. Or perhaps she would turn into bubbles, with the music inside her playing all at once when they popped. She imagined it would smell like roses.
At 11PM, she began her walk.
Moving through the tall grasses, they gave way to short clippings and dirt again. The stars above still clapped their hands in time and blew sweet air through her hair as she twirled and moved her arms. She imagined the gorgeous angels around a may-pole with her. She had never been happier. Any minute now, her heart would explode. Any minute now, she would be set free. Any minute now, this Earth couldn't hold her any longer. Any minute -
At 11PM, a drunk girl who had wandered away from a party got hit by a semi near the edge of a field. She couldn't hear it coming.