Living by sound - Angst

[leviathans-moon.livejournal.com]

Title: Living by sound
Team: Metaphermorphose
Bingo-Tabelle: Angst
Challenge: Joker (Trauma - 2014)
Disclaimer: auf Englisch


The first time he sat at a piano, he was three years old. His grandmother had purchased an old wooden piano from a pub that was about to shut down. For her it had just been a bit of furniture, something to liven up the entrance hall and put a vase of flowers on. He didn’t know what he was doing, just tall enough to reach the keys and put his tiny fingers on them, causing high-pitched sounds to echo through the house. The high notes were the easiest keys to press down and he had a lot of fun doing it. The adults were annoying enough at some point to settle for a crying three-year-old rather than hear more of those out of tune notes. Next time they visited it was tuned and he was allowed to play with it for longer. It was no surprise that his grandmother’s house became his favourite place. She signed him up for lessons at the age of four and unlike so many of his peers he never grew tired of it. Even when lots of his friends started partying on school nights, he chose the piano over them – some forgave him, some didn’t, shaking their heads and no longer inviting him.
At eighteen he started studying music at one of the most prestigious universities. His parents didn’t question his choice, didn’t ask what he planned on doing with a degree in music. They had never asked, but simply known that there was no other path for him. They had seen enough concerts to know what he was capable of live, even more so than practising at home in his room. They attributed it to the stage and the feeling of the audience; he attributed it to the masterpiece grand pianos he was playing on. When he was on stage, he simply revelled in the magnificent sound these instruments could produce.

***
He woke up to the sound of screeching metal and flying sparks. It registered within him that someone was trying to cut through something, but he couldn’t quite place a reason or the proper source. He opened his eyes and immediately closed his right one again, a sticky liquid leaking into it. He tried to lift himself and realised he couldn’t; and in a flash his mind went to his hands. He needed to see them, feel them. He tried to wriggle his fingers, a strengthening exercise the first thing he thought of, but he felt nothing – in both hands. He looked up, his left eye straining to see, but where his hands should have been visible there was only metal, pressed over his wrists, cutting into his flesh. Edges of bone were visible in the mess of blood and skin and sinews and he knew that his life was over. It would be better if he died here, in this ball of metal that used to be his car.
And he screamed.