His lungs were wet. He could feel the moisture swishing around in there. Taking a deep breath, he tried to focus on his surroundings. Which were dismal. There, laying on a concrete floor, back hurting from laying down so long, he knew he was going to die. He was going to die in a filthy alley somewhere listening to the sound of people having fun in a home not five feet from him. Fun he knew he would never feel.

So there he lay, discontent in his own misery, waiting for blood to fill his lungs and suffocate him. A miserable end for a miserable monster.

He tried to direct his attention back to his current predicament. Slowly, he tried wiggling his fingers. Gruesome, thin fingers, that moved but just barely. They hurt like hell. They hurt like something worse than hell.

Slowly, he tried to hoist himself up. Just a little, he didn't want the people inside the house to catch a glimpse of the living corpse outside. Even if he may not be so living very soon. He found his body could still move. Painfully. Using perhaps too much of his energy, he pulled himself up a little bit and into a standing position. He wobbled, the round unsteady on his feet and his mind wondering if it was really the ground that was a bit warbly.

Falling back down onto his knees, he buried his head in his hands and tried to block out the sounds around him. There were too many. There was too much unattainable happiness and bright lights and pounding headaches that he had to forget about.

It was there, as he accepted his death of watery lungs or blood loss or whatever it was his body would eventually give out of, that he heard music. Light, happy sounds of a piano playing nearby. He picked his head up and closed his blurry eyes. Yes, there it was. His salvation. The notes picked him up in ways the player never could. The phantom piano made his eyes slightly less blurry. His head faintly less weak. He could not move, he could not breath, but when did that stop him before? The living corpse is living for a reason, and no pathetic attempts at irony could ever placate him. He had to survive, it was never a question. The piano got louder as he stood up again and walked back to his home. No one would ever invite him to house parties, nor could he return the favor. Perhaps that was okay. Camaraderie is in the piano after all. Comeradie was in the piano.