It was one of those nights when Daniel felt the weight of his existence pressing down on him. Everyone in his circle had conspired to make him feel small and insignificant, and he realized they had won. His guitar, a sunburst Telecaster, sat propped against the corner of his cluttered apartment, its wooden body glowing dimly in the light of a single table lamp. The coffee table was littered with takeout boxes, sheet music, and rejection letters from record labels. He hadn’t played a gig in months, and even when he did, no one cared.
“Just another face in a sea of struggling musicians,” he muttered, kicking an empty can of beer across the room. He knew that when he died, there would be little evidence that he ever lived. He flopped onto his couch, staring at the ceiling.
Daniel had dreamt of being a musician ever since he could remember, but the universe had other plans. The gigs that came through were sparse and unpaid, his songwriting was stagnant and derivative, and his social media accounts were filled with dismal and indifferent silence. He scrolled through his phone, looking at pictures of famous musicians, the people he envied and tried to emulate. Their lives seemed effortlessly glamorous—beautiful women, sleek cars, sold-out shows. How often do those people have to worry about coming up with the rent? What would it be like to be someone like that?
The thought lingered as he set his phone down and reached for his guitar.
The moment his fingers brushed the strings, something strange happened. He felt a jolt of static shoot up his arm. He flinched, shaking his hand, but the sensation faded almost as quickly as it had come. Weird. He shrugged it off and tuned the guitar, plucking each string with expert precision.
The first chord he played was a G major, the quintessential cowboy chord, a familiar sound that usually brought him some comfort. But tonight, it felt… different. The notes hung in the air longer than usual, vibrating through his skull as if the sound had turned physical. It was then that Daniel noticed the room had begun to shift. His fingers kept moving, strumming a melody he didn’t recognize, his body acting independently.
The walls blurred, and his vision seemed to stretch and twist, pulling him through some invisible tunnel. His fingers kept strumming, and he kept playing the unknown song. And then, everything stopped.
Daniel blinked, finding himself standing in the middle of a crowded club. A stage with bright lights. The electric hum of an audience waiting in anticipation. He looked down at his hands. They were gripping a guitar—a Stratocaster that wasn’t his. The strings hummed beneath his fingers, a warm buzz of anticipation. But it wasn’t just the guitar that was different.
He was different.
Daniel stumbled back, his mind scrambling to understand what had just happened. A glance at the mirror behind the bar stopped him cold. He wasn’t looking at his own reflection. Staring back at him was someone else—a man with sharp cheekbones, styled dark hair, and a leather jacket that looked like it cost more than his monthly rent. His hands, calloused and weathered from years of playing, were smooth and adorned with rings.
“What the hell?” he whispered, his voice sounding foreign in his own ears.
A voice crackled over the speakers before he could fully process what was happening. “Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for John Wisher!”
The crowd erupted into cheers, and Daniel—or John, apparently—felt his legs carry him to the microphone. His body moved with an effortless swagger as if it knew exactly what to do. Muscle memory. Without thinking, he strummed the guitar, hung down much lower than he was used to, and began to play. The song flowed out of him effortlessly, like he had played it a thousand times before. His fingers danced along the fretboard, and John’s voice boomed through the speakers, captivating the crowd.
For a moment, he was lost in it. The music, the applause, the energy of the room. He felt alive in a way he hadn’t in years. But as the song ended and the cheers died, reality hit him like a punch. This wasn’t his life. This wasn’t his body. He was… someone else.
Panicking, Daniel rushed off the stage, ducking into the club’s back alley. His heart pounded in his chest, his mind racing. How was this possible? Was he dreaming? Was he dead?
He clutched the guitar tightly, his fingers trembling as he plucked the strings again, desperate to find a way back. The same strange melody came to his hands, unwelcome and unintentional, and the world around him began to warp again.
With a rush of sound and light, Daniel was back in his apartment, staring at his reflection. His heart hammered, but the relief was overwhelming. He was himself again.
For days, he avoided his Telecaster, afraid to touch it. The experience felt too real to be a hallucination, but he couldn’t make sense of it. Was it magic? Some kind of curse? He didn’t know. All he knew was that playing those notes had transported him into another person’s life.
But curiosity gnawed at him, whispering to him in the quiet moments. He couldn’t stop thinking about the rush of being John Wisher—the thrill of the crowd, the feeling of success. That was what he had always wanted, wasn’t it? To be someone? To live a life that mattered?
Finally, Daniel gave in.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, he picked up his sunburst Telecaster again, his fingers trembling as he played the same mysterious melody. Once more, the room warped and spun, and when the world settled, he was somewhere new.
This time, he was in a recording studio. His reflection in the glass showed a different man—a polished, clean-cut singer in his mid-30s, headphones around his neck, a crowd of producers nodding in approval from the other side.
The life he’d stepped into was equally glamorous. The day was a whirlwind of recording sessions, photo shoots, and catered dinners at expensive restaurants. For a while, it was everything Daniel had dreamed of. He felt important. Admired. Successful.
But as the days went by, something began to gnaw at him. Each time he returned to his own life, his apartment felt more foreign, more distant. The simple act of waking up as Daniel in his shabby apartment became painful. It was as if he had tasted something sweet, only to have it ripped away again.
He began to spend more and more time in other people’s lives. A rockstar in one life, a wealthy and prominent composer in another. With each guitar strum, he was someone new—someone better. But the more he switched, the harder it became to remember who he really was. He would wake up in a stranger’s body and struggle to recall his own face. His own name.
Soon, the lines began to blur. He would return to his apartment after a week spent as some famous DJ, only to feel like he was stepping into a stranger’s home. He no longer felt like Daniel. He no longer wanted to be Daniel.
One night, after an especially wild show as the frontman of an explosive punk group, Daniel—or the person who had once been Daniel—sat in a luxurious hotel room, staring at the Strat. His fingers trembled as he picked it up again, the strings humming softly. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been himself, and he didn’t want to go back.
His life memories were fading like distant dreams—shadows of another existence. He could barely recall his face in the mirror or the sound of his voice.
As he played the familiar melody, the room began to spin, and he smiled. He no longer cared where the guitar would take him as long as he never had to return to the emptiness of his old life.
The last chord faded, and Daniel disappeared, swallowed by the endless stream of lives he would never fully belong to, lost in a symphony of borrowed faces and forgotten names.
In a state of existential despair, Daniel hoped to “become music” and live an infinite supernatural existence. All I know, all that anyone knows, is that if you visit a run-down building in the southern part of Iroquois County, Ohio, you will find a sunburst Telecaster in the corner of a dusty, abandoned apartment, waiting for its next player.
