piano strings
The sudden rise of blood filled her mouth, thick and metallic, as the sword cut through her ribs and severed her spinal column. Her eyes widened in agonizing realization, her lips slightly parted in a frozen gasp. Unimaginable pain paralyzed her at once – more than she ever thought physically possible, more than she thought she could bear. With a jolt of effort amidst the heavy despair, she looked up at him, the one she had been in love with, but that felt like so long ago.
Time seemed to stop as she gazed deep into the beautiful luminescent shade of blue in his eyes. She could almost feel the warmth of his body, they were so close, but his eyes were not focused on her. He was watching something far away, something she could not see or hear, something he had lost himself within. He didn't appear to recognize her, even when she weakly called out his name. She vaguely mused that this was the closest they had ever been, and in another time, in another life, she would have leaned forward and kissed him. But within seconds he was already moving apart from her. As he slid her body off the cold steel, her fingers reflexively pressed hard against the wound, feeling nothing but hot liquid gushing over her hands. And then she fell. The ground rushed upwards, and she found herself next to the flowerbed with nothing but intense pain clawing through every fiber in her body. Then the abrupt smell of fire stung her nostrils. The memory of his eyes, that blank stare, faded slowly, and a peculiar calmness began to settle the panic in her chest.
She didn't know why she had chosen to run into the church. Perhaps it was some fleeting hope that something familiar, something comforting could break the trance beneath his eyes. But now she realized it had been hopeless.
Lying on her back against the hard stone, peering up through shades of flowers – white and yellow, vibrant, alive – she thought she heard a faint melody. An old tune she once knew how to play on the piano. Even now she could still feel the stubborn weight of the keys under her slender fingers, not yet adjusted to moving in flowing patterns across the stretch of white and black, and her mother glancing over her shoulder in quiet approval. But when her mother died, she no longer played as often, though occasionally the urge to linger in the past held her captive and her fingers found their way into the practiced precision of her mother's favorite tune. And her eyes would sometimes catch a figure standing below her window, in the street, listening. A boy with blonde hair.
But that was years ago. The growing heat was making her dizzy, and the boy with blonde hair was still here, except he couldn't hear the melody that she could. Perhaps he could hear nothing but static now – his memory of her piano dead, vanished. Past the flowers, she saw orange and white flames tearing upwards, engulfing the splintered wooden benches, but the intense heat felt much more real and alarming than that visual carnival. The petals wilted, and black pillows of smoke were scarring the stone walls, yet still she couldn't move. Blood loss. The slippery pain over her abdomen, the numbness in her arms, the mild drifting sensation claiming her head – it all meant nothing, because she was attempting to listen to that melody playing so softly, so perfectly.
The sweat clung to her skin, raw and pained. Smoke was filling the air above her, and each shallow breath stretched and burnt through her lungs, her throat. The blood began trickling from the corner of her lips. Nothing was right. And yet nothing felt wrong. Between two fingers, she gently pressed the stem of a nearby white lily, crushing the soft thin green until the head bowed to greet her. Heavy footsteps, followed by the sound of metal sliding against concrete, swallowed the piano tune running around her thoughts. The blonde haired man stepped over her without pause, red dripping from the sword he held, and his boots trailed further from her sight as he departed, a dark shadow cast across his face in the flames. She couldn't remember if he was the same boy that had stood outside her window, listening to her play piano.
The white lily crumpled in her palm as smoke filled her lungs and asphyxiation set in, her body curling like a cut string.