All the Best People are Mad – Part Three
"Do come in, do come in." A pleasant-looking Roderich greeted Eliza and her parents at the entrance to her house.
They came in and were pleased to find that he lived in a comfortable, well-furnished house. He would do well for Eliza.
He offered some drinks and carried them on a platter up to the music room. That night Roderich was going to propose to Eliza, having her parents' permission for her hand in marriage.
So he talked amiably to them as he set up the piano, first getting his books and then clearing the lid. He lifted it and was about to prop it open when his hand slipped. The piano lid fell straight onto his hand.
Since then he hadn't been the same. He woke up and couldn't feel his hand, effectively ruining his dream of becoming a concert pianist.
So he composed. He married Eliza and they had a child, but the poor soul died at only a year old.
Roderich became morose. He could be calm one moment and in a fit of rage the next. He spent days locked in the music room and no amount of convincing from Eliza could get him to come out. He trusted no one.
Then one day a gunshot rang out from his music room. She rushed to see what happened and there was Roderich standing with a small gun in his hand and a smoking bullet on the floor.
"Roderich, dear, what's the matter?" She took the gun from him and he offered surprisingly no resistance.
"Burn it," he said in a flat voice. "This doesn't make me happy."
"What?"
"The piano."
"The piano?" Something was terribly wrong, Eliza realized, if he wanted to destroy his precious instrument. "But you love it."
"No, I don't. I don't love anything."
Her heart stopped. Did he not… he didn't love her anymore? She fainted and was out cold before she hit the floor.
She woke up to his voice singing in a now-dead language and his hand combing through her hair gently.
"R-Roderich?" she asked in a hoarse whisper.
"It's me," he said with a tender smile.
"But I thought you said – I thought you said you didn't love me." She came almost to tears as the words came out of her mouth.
"I fought a battle with my own mind. And I won." He leaned down and kissed her. "I really do love you."
But his fear had rubbed off on her. She no longer trusted him. "Would you die for me?"
"In a heartbeat."
"I don't believe you." Her voice trembled. This couldn't be the real Roderich. He'd just said he didn't love her. Why was he torturing her?
She picked up the gun that lay on the floor in the exact spot she'd dropped it. "Stop lying to me!" Eliza shouted and shot it at his head.
As he lay on the tile floor with blood pouring out the side of his head Eliza realized she'd killed him. She'd killed the real Roderich.
"No…" she moaned and held his head close. "No, no, no, no, no…"
As she embraced him Roderich realized that the monster in his head had moved on to her. It wasn't her fault. It wasn't her fault. "I love you…" he managed to whisper before his eyes closed and he was gone.
"RODERICH!" she shouted, her voice breaking. She screamed his name again and again for hours, laying on top of his lifeless body and practically clawing at his shirt.
It wasn't until she began to cough up blood that she realized the gun was still there, that it still had one bullet left. She looked down at her hand, covered in Roderich's blood and her tears, and then down at the gun.
With shaking hands she picked it up and raised it to her head. "I love you, Roderich Edelstein."
The gun fired.
