Grand Finale

It was difficult to call what the aliens were listening to in the arena “music.” To us, music requires some sort of pattern, tension, resolution, tonality/atonality, chords, message, direction. Yet these random screeches, guttural clicks, metallic scrapes, incoherent crashes, and earsplitting vocalizations had none of that.  Not wishing to offend, we nodded, but our tortured facial expressions must’ve given us away.

“You don’t like our music?” they asked.

“It’s different from what we’re used to,” we responded, reaching.

“Good,” they said, their hide color manifesting as a self-satisfied pink. “It’s our darkest weapon. Our world-ender. And apparently, it works.”