I am drunk, I am not thinking, I qrote this thing on a whim and I am not dojng a spell check or editing or any of that today. God knows, I will suffer a giant hangover tomorrow. PAYNE PAIN.
Sike. EDIT 2021-04-16: Fixed drunken misspellings, repetitions and other shit like that
Max had always liked pianos.
They were such interesting musical instruments: huge, yet able to produce the most precise of sounds, stringing them together into beautiful melodies. And the pianist, as the creator, nay, a jockey, was free to take reins of that melody, steer it into whatever direction he desired.
And Max valued that. Back in the NYPD, even before meeting Michelle, he'd been one hell of a pianist. His melodies were all unique, yet they shared one similarity: always starting slow and somber, and picking up in intensity, shining brightly by the very end; because that way, detective Payne liked to express himself, his own life: a slow and somber beginning filled with parental neglect and abuse, and up to the present – where he was good. Where life was good.
And when Michelle came into his life? Fair to say, the melody could be heard from a long way off.
Because life was that good for Max.
Until it wasn't. It only takes a New York Minute.
After the tragedy struck, the then-young widowman had tried using the piano to cope; whenever the grief got the best of him (and oh boy did it do so often), he'd sit by the piano and try to come up with a melody. A melody that could heal his own injured soul, the melody he could hide behind.
And he'd found it. Long, sleepless nights filled with anguish and tears, he found it.
But it wasn't enough. The walls that were his family had fallen and he'd let the demons inside – and the music wasn't nearly strong enough to kick them out.
The painkillers were not either, but at least they soothed the wretched sensations of his soul being torn apart, forced to relive that hellish evening over and over, being prematurely dragged into his own personal Hell.
And just like that, the music had taken a huge backseat. Max's skill with pianos had done much the same, fading into oblivion, along with most of his thoughts obscured by the thick blanket of opioids. The last he'd seen the instrument that, so long ago, could have been his salvation, was at Woden's mansion; and that place - the events, the tragic tale of another love he wasn't meant to have – only let more demons into his withered soul, to dance their wicked dances among the ashes that were once Max Payne.
The painkillers weren't cutting it anymore – and so the scotch had joined the fray.
As all familiar faces around him – from the days of NYPD, mostly – slowly moved over to the Other Side, Max found himself being cursed with being stuck on This One, stuck in a Limbo. Each day was a repeat of the last – the only differences being when he couldn't afford a drink and had to go and scrounge up extra cash, one way or another. Sometimes, in his drunken dreams, he heard the parts, the scraps of some weird melody.
But he couldn't make sense of it.
Not until Raul Passos (try has he might, he couldn't recall that name from anywhere) came along – and suddenly Max Payne was thrown back into the fray – in no small part "thanks" to himself. It was there, in Hoboken's cemetery, the long forgotten feeling of gun-fight induced adrenaline shaking the detective awake, that Max saw his first piano in almost 9 years.
It was a heavy thing – matte black, meant only for the funerals, to have last rite songs played on it. Max wasn't too far off himself – dressed in a black leathercoat, and having dealt enough death to have this very church busy for, at least, the next month. It was there that the melody, sensing its' chance, finally burst from within; but it was an ugly thing, nothing like what it originally had been – just like Max himself.
The second one Max came across was on the boat stuck in Panama canal. It was a beautiful instrument, for sure, but riddled with bullet holes and blood. A bit like the yacht itself – it used to be stunning, but chock-full of dirty secrets inside (as it turned out later); and now it was a mess, precisely because of that.
The same old, forgotten memory has slowly pushed its' way out of Max's subconscious, but his conscience was already filled with gruesome hangover headache that would have put anyone else into a hospital bed, not to mention a fair share of smarting bullet wounds, so Max, purely out of a long-forgotten reflex, managed only a few notes. They were ugly, lost and off-tune – and that was exactly how he felt at that moment.
The third time Max Payne came across what used to be his favorite instrument was at Rodrigo Branco's "fundraising" party – another empty gathering for another empty occasion, full of empty people that looked like shining stars in a country sky at a first glance but were completely unremarkable in every single way. The piano reflected that – it was a run-of-the-mill thing, and it looked wrong in a place where every single thing oozed price and superiority over the poor of the favelas just below – and again, it was just like Max Payne. Max Payne, who was like a black sheep amongst those socialites.
He'd stopped for a moment, his inner being beckoning him, to play the song of the past – still incomplete, still off-track, but Max was slowly finding the right notes to play – just as he was slowly finding his new purpose in life, something else to live for other than a family he'd never get to have.
The last piano Max came across in the most unexpected of places – a run-down hotel housing a battalion of bloodthirsty right-wing mercs and a couple of very dark secrets. It was an old, beat-down thing, almost ready to fall apart; and yet, it somehow did its job the best. His mind free from the noxious clouds of alcohol (and maybe just a bit dozed by the painkillers, but that was to be expected), Max Payne had finally managed to play his dirge, the soundtrack to his life – and as he played it, as his fingers went through long-forgotten but practiced motions, he finally felt harmony, if only for a few seconds – a feeling buried in the past under hundreds of bottles of painkillers and alcohol.
Because, once again, and probably for the last time, a piano of all things, was a perfect metaphorical comparison to the wretched person that was Max Payne in that moment – just as torn down, just as ragged, yet now armed and inspired with a purpose to do one last thing, or die trying.
When the strings in the piano snapped one by one as the final few notes were played, Max understood perfectly what it meant – and he was completely fine with it. He'd been long overdue for a meeting with his family, anyways.
Max Payne just had to make sure that the bastards that made so many others experience the same pain he'd been housing for a decade wouldn't walk.
Or, if things didn't go his way, in his dying breaths, he'd do his best to ensure they would be walking with a limp.
Off to play Max Payne 3 for the fuck-knows-which time. Don't care if nobody reads this story, had to let my drunk autism out.