story two# the emperor of white noise

Above, a dark sky studded with stars, below, the mire of puddles. Beyond late and getting later, it was now early and the shadows curdled in muted light. They called him the Emperor of White Noise, the King of Sound. He took me to his room and showed me sonorous notes in vast, sonic booms. Seventy thousand records, and not one of them contained music.
I'd asked if they were all sound effect records and he'd replied, oh yes. Shivering through Artic Tundra 4 and crouching beneath the velvet swoop of A Plane Leaving the Tarmac he'd looked at me, eyes glittering behind the oversized lenses he wore. Asked me if I wanted to hear something really powerful. Something he'd made himself.
Before I could answer he'd pulled down a freight of equipment and smiled a raw grin. As I'd lent back on his filthy bedcovers he told me not to worry.
At first, there was nothing, and then a mooching slump through the speakers, dense sweet musk, barely noise at all. Smelting of sound, I raised my head and told him.
Vanilla ice cream. He nodded.
The next one. Slight and luminous, full of shrykull shards, scrooching and mimble, I almost put my hands to my head. He was nodding as if he understand, but the sound was furflous, a neon blue ten watt bulb strobing and straking.
It's the moon. Yes, he'd replied, a full quarter.
I'd asked him how and he'd replied that he knew sound.
We took the equipment to the garden where the moon turned our shadows to bone. The later the hour, the clearer the resonance and so we poured the night in through the filters. It oozed in black shleems and crooked murms, revealing the shape of the hours.