Amazing Grace.

"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see."

"Hello Keith, Sarah, Maha, Terry, ad infinitum....[abridged list] is that you?" 

"Hello? Hello?"

A sickening silence was the only reply. 

That's it. 

This time he really was lost.  

The joke was running a little thin.  

"You'll love the library...", Dave had said.  

At each row of shelves they had lost another of their band, 

"You go on, I'll catch you up."

"You go on, I'll catch you up."

They had been amputated of their members.

He found himself limbless in liminality.

He picked up the book.  

He leafed through its pages.

Here was the illustration he remembered.

They would be able to meet up somewhere in the middle, he thought to himself.

They were all out there, somewhere in the middle. 

He now understood better the evil grin he had seen on Dave's face. 

No, of course, "it didn't matter."

No, of course  "IT didn't matter."

He defined "matter" in his head.

"What didn't matter?"

"What mattered?"

"Did he matter?"

He closed the book. 

He looked around. 

He hummed an air of a song. 

"Amazing Grace."

"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see."

A sound somehow gave this IT a sense.

Post Script.

A Cherokee version of Amazing Grace seemed appropriate to accompany the silence here.