A middle C ringing though the night. A clear 440 Hz. Ahh bliss! But there was no piano in my room. Nor any other piece of musical equipment. What and wherefore? It was night. Sunday night. A no sun day, and a no sun night. A quiet day, and a quiet night. Now see. A C! Middle C. My name is Jeffrey Knight. If it was only Day! O day! Why was there a middle C in the middle of my room? There's no-one here. I live alone. A computer programmer with a musical mind. A poet without a past. The house is mine. All mine. Not mine. The bank's. O C! From sea to shining sea, but why here? Why a C in my room? C Ionian or C Aeolian? C major or C minor? Barents or Saratoga? Which sea? AB or BB? Which C? Ohh! God help! Why was there a C in my room? I am 28 years old. 5 foot 10, slim build, dark hair, Spanish blood, English heritage, Australian culture. Vivid cheekbones, dark skin, a fat Negro bottom lip, a thin cruel upper. Gleaming eyes like headlights. A moulded triangular nose (from the side), with the tip tipping up, to reveal my lovely hairy nostrils. No other frontal facial hair, apart from a somewhat chaotic monobrow. O! The C! The C! Luxurious black hair runs back across the top of my skull like a well- ordered weave. When wet, it glistens, and clumps to form a natural skullcap. When dry, the strands bellow outwards, semi-Afro, an airy protective buffer. But I like it best semi-wet semi-dry; a sleek, almost menacing look; like a shark fin, rising up, then down. O! The C! The C! What to do? The clock did tick, the clock did speak. Now 12 o'clock. Midnight. The witching hour. Was I now to be carried off by a Big Friendly Giant? He would certainly find me pliant, even though scared stiff. A whiff, a piff, a giff! O! I'm scared! Well, not really. I'm cool man. Nothing frightens me. I've got a yellow belt in Tai-Kwon-Do. But I'm not yellow. No coward me. O! What to do? This was certainly unprecedented. I believe in Buddha and the 4 Noble Truths, but I don't think that applies here. Did Buddha ever say anything about a midnight C? The Greeks perhaps? The river Styx? But settle, settle! No need to get supernatural. There has to be a rational explanation for this. The midnight C has both come and gone, so now I can go back to sleep. That's rational enough. O! But it was so real! Such a pure tone! Not adulterated by the wooden reflections of a piano box, or hissed through a whispering reed; this had the purity and perfection of a pure and perfectionate choral organ, one tuned by the great J S Master Bach himself. It was pure, yet rich, rich yet divine. Yes, J S the Master Bach. O Bach! Bach! But let's see now. What to do ... A flash of fire! the purest of reds, with yellow licking its edges, to the centre of my room, again, I turned and saw ... The skull of a dead man! Illuminated by an ethereal glow, now a deep sea blue, then the azure of a pale summer day, next the blue of a dull-beating heart. The blue swirled and throbbed, an engine room of light, an aura of fantastic phase. The jaw opened, and it spoke: "Jeffrey Knight, your days are ended. 7 more days and 7 more nights, and then the end. Make your peace with the world." O! Those dark empty sockets! No light could illumine those darkened holes. Once eyes, now none, the stare of a seer gone blind. It continued. "But the cosmic entity grants you this. At the break of each midnight hour, one question will be answered you fair. Goodbye." And the skull shrank, and the glow shrivelled, and my midnight visitor went back to the land where the stars do trek. And my head grew heavy, and my arms flopped down, and I too passed into another world. I slept.