The Piano
By DaMoyre
Dedicated to: My Golden Sybelle and the Night Island Coven.
I sit in front of the piano, staring down at the keys. Black and White. Like the images playing in my mind, shades of black and white and sometimes gray, flowing and floating inside my head like a soundless movie. Sometimes sepia and magenta tones infiltrate, giving the images a little more life, a touch of reality, but only sometimes. I see myself in the past, a mere reflection that seems to be fading day by day.
I had parents once; we all do at some point. But they are gone now. They have been gone for a long time. A year? Perhaps more. I no longer keep track of time because it really doesn't matter to me. I'm alone. But now and then I can hear their cries, almost taste the tears, salty, warm, bitter too. Almost, but they won't come. My eyes remain dry. They won't allow release, won't allow the pain to subside, to wash away my grief.
Everything is dry and silent inside; dry and silent, like that night, the night that never happened. Because if it had, I would have played the Appassionata. Once. Perhaps only that once and then I would have moved on... to play the other sonatas. Moonlight. Pathétique. I like those as well, but that night it was supposed to be the Appassionata, and since then, that is the only one for me.
My long fingers brush over the keys. I look down at them, marveling at the sounds they make, sounds that cast the silence away; the sounds that come from the piano at the softest, most delicate touch.
I close my eyes and rock back and forth with the music, and I can see the shattered glass all around me. The car is totaled, the sky is dark above and death surrounds me. My dress is torn and I'm bruised, scratched, scared, and cold. But my hands are unharmed and my fingers are still white and long.
My fingers.
Long and graceful, as they have always been, the fingers of a pianist. The great pianist that I was meant to be, because I had been born for fame. At least that's what Fox used to say, but I never really cared for fame. I only cared for my music. Playing made me happy and it made them happy, my parents. Oh, they were so proud of me... so proud and happy.
I skip a note on purpose and shake my head. Why must I be so perfect? I want to make a mistake and then start the melody again. Right from the beginning, Allegro Assai.
I can feel my body surrendering to the music and I'm swept away by the melody, the rolling thunder that comes forth when my fingers touch the piano, an electric discharge.
The notes follow, one after the other, cascading in the perfect imitation of a waterfall, the music of nature, and my ears are flooded with the beautiful sound, my chest filled with passion and exhilaration. I can hardly believe my hands alone can reproduce this melody that can make me forget all that is and isn't.
My fingers. They are different now, slightly harder, perhaps even a little longer, with crystal-like nails that won't break anymore. They used to break, even when I kept them clipped short, the nails of a pianist; the nails that are now sharp and strong, hard like marble, transparent like glass, and they shimmer, glimmer under the dimmest light, as if they held a light of their own. All the result of the Dark Blood.
Dark Blood.
That is what they call it. The Dark Gift, the Dark Blood, the Dark Trick. I heard all those terms before, somewhere in the past, although I don't remember how. Did I read them in a book, perhaps? Or did Armand speak of these things to me? Perhaps it was both. But I knew. We both knew, Benji and I. He told stories at night, always at night. He would never be seen during the day, and we knew why. We always knew why. It wasn't a secret, though perhaps it should have been. But now it's too late, things have changed and I have been born again, resembling one of them, but not yet belonging. Perhaps I never will.
It doesn't matter.
I belong with the music, the sounds of the Appassionata ringing in my ears, strong, powerful, intense, beautiful. Armand always liked my music. He would request I play it for him over and over again. And I happily complied, not to be kind, but because there was nothing in the world I wished to do more than to play the Appassionata.
Music.
The melody has a soothing effect on me, calming the anxiety that makes my heart beat faster even as I rest still. The notes resound in the room, traveling through space, filling the entire house. It is Marius' house. My new home. He has brought me over to their world with a single dark kiss, a kiss that felt wonderful and horrid all at once. I still remember the feel of his mouth on my neck, the sharp fangs tearing my skin and I clung to him like to life itself, embracing the gift, the sensations he offered. My heartbeat rose at once, drumming inside my chest, following the rhythm he set and I screamed.
The pain began to fade, like the lights around me, visions of nothingness began to fill my head and the furious beat of my heart finally slowed down, almost reduced to nothing. I might have tasted peace then, but only for a moment. Marius did not let me rest long enough.
Blood.
I tasted the metallic, coppery fluid inside my mouth. "Drink," I heard him whisper, "Drink, Sybelle, drink! Open your eyes and take what I offer now, and you shall live."
And so I did. I would have turned away but could not do it, the sensation too rich, the shivers of pleasure to ecstatic for anyone to have turned away. I did not refuse it, even when all my fears and images were returned to me along with the magic blood. I had it all back, the pain, the anxiety, my heartbeat rising once more. My peace was gone. He took my only chance away.
It doesn't matter.
The world around me seems so vague. But it is nothing new. It has been like this for a long time. Even now, when my vision is sharper and my senses heightened, touch and smell more refined, this world is dull. My hearing is also more acute, I can hear sounds that I never did before, listen to musical notes and memorize them to perfection, many of them, hundreds of them in a matter of hours. That matters. It's music, and again, it soothes and calms, and comforts the fear and the pain within. I forget it all.
I hear Benji in the background, laughing and talking cheerfully. I can hear him now, even when he's not in the house. He has a mind voice, just the way Armand did. Sometimes he speaks to me, but I have learned to shut him out, lest he intervenes with the music. And Marius, he fixes his cool blue eyes on me, and sometimes I think I fear him. I fear he might take the piano away, forcing me to stop playing. I couldn't stand that.
But Marius doesn't do it. He just watches, silently, patiently, impassively, and he listens. He sits down on the bench next to me, or sometimes on the couch in the next room, and he listens. Perhaps he likes the music too.
Armand is different. I see his face better now, more clearly, without the flaws of mortal vision. He looks more beautiful than he ever did before, when I look at him with my vampire eyes. His voice, his face, his hair, his hands, everything seems perfect. The sculpture of one of those angels in the paintings, those paintings Marius keeps all throughout the house. I know he keeps them because they remind him of Armand.
I know.
Armand, Armand, my angel. There's pain in those dark eyes when he looks at me, more pain than I ever saw before. I understand him because I feel it too. We were always the same, he and I. Broken children and monsters.
"Don't be sad, Armand," I say to him, "Don't be sad because now we can be with you forever, and ever. We will never die, you see. Now we're just like you." This much is true, I am just like him, a body that hosts a broken heart. But we never needed the Dark Blood to be connected. We were always soulmates.
Sometimes I wonder, does Armand love me still? Does he, the way he did before I came to be what I am? Did he only love the mortal woman he once knew, or will our love transcend death and time? I don't know for sure, perhaps I never will.
Armand has talked of his fledgling, Daniel, one I have not yet come to know. He talked of a love that died away with Daniel's mortal life, a passion that would no longer be because it had been tainted by the Gift. I don't quite understand. My feelings remain unchanged. I love Benji, still, my little boy, my keeper. And I love Armand, tender, sweet, loving Armand. If I still know what love is, amidst this confusion, this chaos inside my head, then I think I love them both.
The piano is in front of me, and I sit there, watching the beautiful piece of work in Marius' home, smooth, black surface with inviting keys, patiently waiting for my hands to caress them. I like the other one too, the one they keep in the convent, the one Lestat likes me to play, because the acoustics in the building make it seem as if the music could travel through distance and time.
I suppose it doesn't really matter if know what love is, or if the world around me exists or is nothing but a fantasy. Nothing matters because the piano is here.
I love the piano, it's always there for me, strong and safe, always willing to receive what I can give. The music satisfies all my needs and brings me calm, more so than the kill ever does. My head doesn't hurt anymore, because the music takes that pain away too. And so I play, stretching my fingers over the keys, and I close my eyes, enjoying the self-induced delirium, the frenzied state my body reaches as I play.
Yes... I love the piano.
I can play my music, my melody once more, and make everything go away. It's beautiful, the way the keys can make sounds, sending vibrations throughout the piano, the house, my body, my mind. My mind that is filled with blurry and painful memories, never quite making a clear picture. I don't remember my mother's face. I cannot longer hear my father's voice or Fox's laughter. Those who were once precious to me are nothing but ghosts, wraiths in the back of my mind. And I wonder, will that picture become clearer, or will it only fade some more with the passage of time? I know it not, and I don't care to know.
I'm not planning to tell anyone the story of my life, the way Armand did as he acquiesced to write that book of his. He says it was for me, for Benji and for me, a Symphony for Sybelle. Tragic symphony. And I thank him. I don't have much more to say than that which has already been written in his tale.
The life I led before that fateful night in the Jordan Valley is nothing but a fading star in dark and tempestuous skies. Fox is but the evil brother that seems to have come out of a fairy tale. And I, the princess who was rescued by a knight in shining armor. My Armand, my angel.
This fairy tale, however, has a different ending. My Angel was really a monster, and in the end, I was always a monster myself. Poor Fox, I suppose he never knew the truth.
And now I can live happily ever after. And after and ever. Always...
Always with the piano.
And I play, and I play, the Appassionata once again.
~FIN~