The age old mask of my people was pulled over my eyes to shield them on a night much like this with moonlight piercing the hollow corners of nests long forgotten in the shadows below the human world. The stars had never been brighter and certainly wouldn't lose their shine to the fake light from the arrogant mortals below. Among them was the breathing shell I hollowed out to make a home somehow colder than the original design. Born under a different name which I cannot share due to the nature of my immortal dance of terror and retaliation, I hummed under the identity of a quiet song echoing out into the streets. A newly large city and home to many who acquired my taste for the soft ivory strum on polished black wood I grew a reputation among the people as a new light of harmony between words and sound. The crime and poverty was born from the fame and riches that of failed and successful gold miners alike. In bars or freshly built adult clubs a man could earn his keep just for keeping the song going.
My parents knew that with a child like object in their midst who would pull attention to their lives a new image could be burned to our doorstep as the great bringers of music to the new city of Denver. Dust had only begun to settle as the gangsters moved in crafting a new city life of torture and profound esoteric altruism. With a turn of century they took on new names and sought an economic power as business flourished. American lifestyle revolved around the establishing of a man and his connections. I found myself a young man of just twenty playing for cheap coin with men of color from bar to bar. The nights were alive with the clanging of crude metal onto bar tops for whiskey and alone in my music I constructed a taste for intellectuals who could carry more of a conversation then the common drunk I was enslaved to. Certain tastes bring bad fortune and mine came calling in the form of a beautiful young man not three years younger than I who seemed to hold his liquor for hours despite the steady pour.
Four nights he called and each time left me a single piece of authentic silver he claimed to have mined and pressed himself. The coins were etched with words unreadable to human lips and sent chills through my pores and I stroked the serrated edges. As the silver was paid I would bring back a song for him from the black of my curiosity to see more of these tantalizing coins.
On the fifth night I played for my new gentle artist of metal a new song, I pulled more of myself into a hammering of chords I knew he could not dare to look away from and with this I captured my own fate. When the ending drew near I asked more of him then I had ever before. Touching would simply not due and now I knew the origin of these coins could no longer be kept from me. "Teach me." I pleaded. For dreams I wanted to scream out into the night were filled with the memory of these silver demons I held so high.
My master was willing and spoke into my lips the words of damned labor that would change the tune of my soul to a slightly sharper taste. He transformed the darkest of my nights into a pinnacle parade of revelry and luxurious hellfire. As the twenty first years of mortality hit my veins a block was created and no more did the sweet poison of serenity ever breach my mind from the red roads I had inside. No more did thirst quench nor lungs laugh, and certainly never would a memory taste so sweet.
The scar was deeper than any blade could kiss and with it came the sweet divinity that all of my blood dwell inside of. An insight was gifted to me and my people, so quiet, so wrought with snakes tongue. Separation from the rest came easier than expected as my soul could see further and speak louder when near them. The sun passed me in silenced and only brought lessening humanity to my existence. Dropped morals were incentive to press my condition further and expel reluctant victims from my kingdom. I lived among shadows and satirical laughter that seemed to both flow from and drown my very thoughts. Acidic hallucinations burned holes in my time and a sea of blood carried me through the decades, forgetting man from child as I took each soul in turn.
Within years the poisoned divinity I begged for so cruelly on that night rotted everything I could have to a fine paste that smeared in my skull when blood pumped. I sat beside my master for nearly a decade as he taught and retaught the ways of the mask to me, a suckling child. For each year I was to be his progeny I would be rewarded. No lifeless ungodly power teased me but a chance to taste and soak in those silver stars. Upon receiving my tenth medal apart from the initial taste I was given before my curse I was set free to explore.
Ten years locked in a mansion with rivers of life and moldy food left me unprepared for how much the world had changed. The year was 1910 and once more I found a calling to entertain. The colored man I had played by for so many years was now the owner of a bar and greeted me with open arms as the new act for his customers.