After what felt like an hour of blindly groping around behind the desk, Heather managed to align the plug correctly to enter the socket.

 

She pulled her arm out from behind the furniture and started fidgeting her new metronome into a position she could live with. It was an odd thing; its body was carved from a beautiful dark hardwood. Rather than being a prefabricated layer of plastic, its interface appeared to be hand carved directly into the wood and painted in a bright purple. Metronomes tend to be pyramidal, and this one continued the trend save for the unusual, dramatic pinch just a couple inches from the bottom, giving the tool a drastically different silhouette reminiscent of... well of something Heather had never played with anyway.

 

Along the metronome's sides were strange letters in the same purple color, which Heather didn't recognize. The man whose yard sale she scored this masterpiece from spoke with a thick Slavic-sounding accent, maybe it was Russian or something like that.

 

Deciding its positioning was fine, she set the dial to a cool 80 bpm, then sat down on her bed with her guitar. She had a pretty good grasp on her scales and intervals, and she was decent with chords, but she'd always had the most trouble with her rhythm. It was just her luck that she found this thing when she did - maybe doing her usual practice to an external rhythm would help her train her internal rhythm. She decided to start with simple scalar runs up and down, and go from there.

 

An hour later Heather was still playing scales in various intervals. She never practiced for this long at a time, but something in her compelled her to keep going, like she was in the zone. Her eyes were nearly closed and she had long been breathing in time with the metronome.

 

*tick*

 

*tick*

 

She'd attempted to play some chords earlier, but unusually found them to be too much to think about. Even playing her scales in thirds now was straining what her mind could handle, like it was stuck in a pit of honey. Very warm honey, slowing her movements, surrounding her on all sides with pleasant warmth... actually now that she thought about it, she did feel very hot.

 

*tick*

 

*tick*

 

Heather managed to tear her attention from her instrument for long enough to set it down and remove her flannel shirt. That felt a bit better, but after a moment she dimly realized she had pulled off her tank top as well, and was in the process of lazily wriggling out of her jeans.

 

With that done, she glanced over at her guitar, and considered that scales were really hard. The still rising heat in her body inspired a better idea. She set the guitar on the ground, leaning against the side of her bed, then laid down and slid one hand down under her panties. She giggled dimly at the discovery that she was already wet.

 

*tick*

 

*tick*

 

She began groping at her breast with her other hand and traced a line up and down her folds.

 

*up*

 

*down*

 

*up*

 

*down*

 

She pressed into her clit on each repetition, up and down, up and down, any remaining thoughts having long since departed her empty little head. She let out another giggle and intensified her efforts on her breast, all in time with the rhythm.

 

*tick*

 

*tick*

 

*tick*

 

She felt the pleasure build and build with each slow, rhythmic stroke, until after minutes or hours or years she felt it reaching a climax. She clenched and saw white and screamed as the earth shattering orgasm rocked her.

 

After an eternity of agonizing bliss, the orgasm subsided and her breathing fell back in time with the metronome. Completely spent and empty, the mindless musician began falling deeper. She gave one last giggle as the ticking guided her further down and sleep took her. The metronome would continue its instruction in her dreams, tick-ticking until it saturated her inner rhythm forever.

 

*tick*

 

*tick*

 

*tick*