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Chapter music: bit(dot)ly/sotpm02-music

"SINS OF THE PIANO MAN"
CHAPTER 02: TWENTY-ONE YEARS OF SWAN SONGS

I'm just a dead man,
Lying on the carpet.
Can't find a heartbeat.
Make me breathe,
I want to be a new man—
Tired of the old one,
Out with the old plan.

"Dead Man" by Jars of Clay

EDWARD MASEN
March 27, 1987

Six weeks passed. The thirst was unbearable, and my face was becoming gaunt from starvation, the purple circles beneath my eyes deep and ugly. I knew it was only a matter of time now…a matter of how many days or hours or minutes passed before I took another life.

I refused to take another human life.

I stole blood from a Seattle blood bank.

I was still taking from innocents.

April 28, 1987

Five weeks this time. The flames roared.

There had to be a substitute for human blood.

I decided to try human food. Its revolting appearance and sometimes questionable smell had been enough to make me steer clear of it since my change, but perhaps my system could still tolerate it.

I bought a T-bone steak and ate it raw. It was the most disgusting thing I'd ever put in my mouth, which was saying something, considering my usual fare. Upon the slightest contact with my teeth, the meat shredded and mashed. The blood was cold and unappetizing. The congealed, rubbery fat was the worst part.

With my overly-sensitive body, I felt it descend. I felt how it slithered down my throat, doing nothing to slake the fire that resided there. I felt as it passed through my esophagus, how it dropped to the bottom of my stomach to sit there as a heavy, uncomfortable, anchor-like weight.

Lesson in vampire anatomy learned. I had no stomach acid. Human food was officially out. Now what?

I had to get rid of it.

The food came back up as whole chunks of meat cradled in shredded and pulverized bits of red meat and white fat. It was coated in my venom.

Disgusting.

June 2, 1987

Ten weeks had passed since I'd had my last bag of blood, and for the first time in my existence, I felt weak, almost tired. I hardly felt the burn now, though rationally I knew that it was all-consuming. The pain had become my companion in the moments when the monster inside was kind enough to let me be.

Maybe I'd finally die, like I should have all those years ago. Maybe starvation was the key. I'd be all right with dying. The world would be better off. I wondered what waited on the other side for me. I thought it might be hell, but surely hell could be no worse than this.

I lay on my side on the hotel bed in the Seattle penthouse, staring out at the city dispassionately. I'd stayed here, because I didn't know where else to go. It was afternoon, and a deep fog had set over half of the buildings that were within sight from the west-facing window.

My mind wandered as I watched afternoon drift into night. I thought of Renée and wondered how she was. She would be at least four months pregnant now—showing, beginning to feel life within. I sent a silent prayer to a god I didn't think I believed in to keep the child safe. The child's welfare was unfathomably important to me.

Perhaps I was grateful to the life Renée carried, grateful that through such an unnerving experience I had found something to grasp onto, something worth changing for. Though my body was working against me at every turn, not taking a human life had altered something within me, made me feel somehow more human. I was still a monster, though. I could never forget that.

Several times now I'd considered visiting Forks, only to realize the absurdity of a vampire protecting a woman and her child, particularly when he was essentially an addict working so hard to abstain from human blood; the last thing I needed was temptation. I was less likely to be a protector than a predator, and so I did the best I could: I prayed daily to a god that had long ago forsaken my soulless existence. If you're listening, please keep them safe.

June 3, 1987

Blood.

Warm and salty.

Screw sainthood. Screw starvation. I couldn't take it anymore.

I stole from another blood bank.

September 13, 1987

I sipped from the bag of blood and wondered how Renée was, if she'd had the baby, if she was still with Charlie, if she was living in Forks. I grabbed a second pint as I recalled the luscious undertones of her blood.

February 12, 1991

Three and a half years had passed since I'd met Renée. I was in Billings, Montana now, sitting in a park and starving myself again, tempting myself with the sweet blood of those who walked past. In time, I knew I'd steal from another poorly-stocked blood bank, but for now I could simply be myself; the burn was there, but it wasn't as all-consuming as it once had been. I was, quite surprisingly, learning.

Since giving up the hunt that night, I'd felt more humanlike. My thoughts weren't consumed with bloodlust and hunting strategies. Suddenly, the expansiveness that was my vampire brain had even more room to focus on things that were harmless and enjoyable. Human, even.

I watched movies, read books, listened to music.

I'd done all these things throughout the decades, but now I had the ability to give them my undivided attention. I read Shakespeare and didn't think of blood above the words on the pages. I watched The Princess Bride and laughed with the other moviegoers, instead of plotting to cull the herd.

I was different.

More man than monster? I doubted that, but it was a nice thought.

No matter what, my sins followed me everywhere I went.

August 19, 1996

I bought a house on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, in a town called Damascus. It felt like the right thing to do, like it would ground me to this new, nonviolent lease on life. Nomadic life presented far too many temptations.

The house was easy running distance to three blood banks.

August 22, 1996

If I chose not to think about it, I could almost convince myself that the voices coming from my television were people in my home. To acknowledge the truth, that I was utterly alone, was unbearable.

August 28, 1996

I bought a sleek, black concert grand piano.

Would my mother be pleased to know that I remembered how to play, that though her face was an increasingly blurry memory, I remembered her hands guiding mine on the ivory and coal black keys?

I played "Sweet Hour of Prayer" first. It was her favorite. I couldn't remember her ever playing it, or my playing it with her, but somewhere deep down, I remembered her love for it.

I will miss her forever.

Would she regret that she gave her life for mine, such as it was?

July 19, 1997

Nine years of an almost eerie solitude had passed both sluggishly and swiftly. The guilt continued to eat away at my gut like a squirming tapeworm, no matter how much I endeavored to ignore it. I saw their faces, felt their presence, heard their angry, hurt cries, as well as their more resigned whimpers. It was then that I learned that the living—or the somewhat alive, in my case—kept the dead preserved far more effectively than any memorial ever could.

My blood-crazed nomadic years had been so distracting, so fuelled by bloodlust, that I'd never stopped to grieve my own human life. I had certainly never given my victims any thought.

Now they were all I thought about.

So I found myself writing down the name of every innocent life I'd ever taken. When I was finished, five hundred and sixteen names filled four pieces of college-ruled notebook paper. They belonged to the people I never should have touched, the people who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and whose bloodless bodies were rarely ever found, because I'd thrown them in lakes and rivers and oceans or concealed them deep in the ground.

I frowned and gripped at my hair. I hadn't realized how many innocents I'd killed, but nearly a fifth of my killings were of these blameless souls. I had chosen not to count them over the years, as if not knowing the depth of my own evil would somehow absolve me of my sins.

It didn't.

Sitting at my piano, I began to compose music in their memory. I tried to capture their essence in the compositions, tried to encapsulate their final streaming thoughts about life and love and anger and regret.

They were so beautifully flawed.

So human.

My fingers crashed down on the keys in frustration.

So long as I drank their blood, even from bags, I was still a monster.

I would never be human or anything remotely close to it.

If only I could run from myself.

October 9, 1997

I composed a lullaby for Renée's child.

I didn't know why. The little girl or boy would be ten this year—far past lullabies.

It was fucking absurd.

March 21, 2001

The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra was playing my music, but they didn't know this.

Nor did they realize they were playing the swan songs of seven of my innocent victims.

Their melodic ghosts had become my sole companions since giving up the hunt.

January 30, 2005

Recovering alcoholics were right. Some days were much harder to cope with than others. For me, the days at the end of a month were hardest, because they were just before I would steal more blood. My body revolted most during this time; the thirst flared, my muscles bunched with unspent energy. I was a snarling, caged lion, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

Feed, the monster suggested.

Feed.

Feed.

Feed.

Tonight I was even thirstier than usual. My mind obsessed not only over blood but also the hunt. I wanted to run. I wanted to trap my prey in a corner and slice my teeth through silken, sweat-soaked skin. I wanted the heady climax of an artery gushing adrenaline-spiced blood into my eager mouth and the sexual arousal I felt because of it. I desired the experience as much as I desired the blood this time.

Seventeen years of semi-sobriety were about to go down the hole.

I drove to downtown Portland, plotting as I wove through traffic. I would take a criminal. I wouldn't take an innocent. Taking out "one of the bad guys" was the lesser of evils, I decided, even if it was still a sin.

My self-control slipping steadily, I parked near the yawning mouth of an alleyway and jumped out of the car. The alleys were dark and slick, coated in a thin sheen of rainwater, car oil and soggy paper debris. Light reflected on the puddles as I strode through the shadows, my thirst directing my step. I smelled humans in the buildings around me, heard their beating hearts, but their thoughts were harmless, caught up in mundane things, like the weather or who should take the trash out. Few of them were even on the streets tonight.

I passed a greasy homeless man who asked for money. He was hungry, too, but he wasn't sure what he wanted more: a cheap burger or heroin. I could empathize, on some level. The hunt was my heroin. I threw down a hundred and kept walking, ignoring his joyful thank yous. I was afraid that if I stopped for one second longer, I'd latch myself onto his neck like the parasite I was.

Alley after alley, I searched…and found nothing. After decades of living a life in shadowed backstreets such as these, I had never encountered such a quiet night. Just my rotten luck. Apparently human violence had declined since the Clinton years.

Maybe this was God trying to tell me to get my pale ass back home.

Letting out an anguished sigh, I slumped to the ground, resting my back and head against the cold metal of a foul-smelling dumpster. I could smell Chinese food and salmon rotting inside it.

The thirst did not abate.

No matter what I did, it was there. Sure, it was not as distracting as it once had been; removing the hunt from the volatile nature of the bloodlust had given me a piece of my humanity back, but it was only a small, tenuous piece. Tonight was proof of that.

I smelled the stray dog before he ambled around the alley corner. He was medium-sized, covered in a scruffy layer of fawn-colored shag that was caked with semi-dried mud. Dirt and animal death—odiferous scents of decay—clung to him; he'd undoubtedly rolled in something. Even so, it was his blood that I noticed most strongly. My throat burned to life again. Though his blood was nowhere near as appetizing as a human's, it was warm and alive nonetheless, pumping through his small and fragile chest. The heartbeat was faster than an average human's, fluttering at about one hundred beats per minute, even while at rest. I licked my lips.

The dog stopped at the edge of the alley and watched me with dark, cautious eyes, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air. He whimpered, probably correctly sensing he was in the presence of a superior predator, one he had no chance of besting.

I stared back at him and wondered, Can I drink from you? I swallowed venom. The notion was not entirely unappealing at this point.

But then the dog did something I didn't expect. Tongue dangling out the side of his mouth in a strange canine smile, he loped up to me and lay down beside my still form. He nudged my knee with his wet nose.

Despite my foul, frustrated mood and the pain in my throat, I found myself laughing at the animal's dimwitted pack instincts. "Do you have no sense of self-preservation?"

The dog tilted his head at me, as if considering my words. He snorted.

"I don't have any food for you," I said, my voice raspy from thirst. "In fact, you may be my food if you're not careful." The dog growled softly, and I laughed again. Without a second thought, I reached out and scratched the stupid animal behind an ear. He leaned into my cool touch happily, licking the side of my wrist. His breath smelled even worse than his hair and lingered on my skin, but the gentle contact gave me the same phantom clench in my chest that I'd experienced with Renée seventeen years earlier. That was the same number of years it had been since anyone had touched me, or I them.

"Dammit," I growled. I couldn't kill him. Not after he did that. Stupid mutt.

Some predator I was.

But maybe I could kill another animal, a less cognizant one? A deer, perhaps? They were plentiful on the woodsy outskirts of Portland, if all the near-car-accidents with them were to be of any indication. Could animal blood be a substitute for human blood?

I could drive to a national park and…and then what? How would I even begin to hunt animals? I'd never even done that as a human. Could I just track them with my instincts, the same way I did with humans?

Still scratching at the dog's head and ears, I considered the possibilities. What if I could drink from animals? It seemed a much more morally satisfying place to be on the food chain. Taking the life of an animal with little more awareness than a tree would surely feel less horrifying than taking the lives of people who could change and grow and live long, human lives; it would also solve the problem of my indirectly taking human life every time I stole from a blood bank—which was rather often, if I was being honest with myself.

And I wouldn't lose the hunt. It wouldn't be the same, surely, but it would be something.

I rose from the damp ground, a new, almost foreign hope deep in my chest. Maybe this was my redemption, my fresh start. I began to walk away, only to have the dog follow alongside me. "Shoo," I said. "Go on."

He stayed.

"You are one dumb creature," I told him, but for some reason I was smiling when I said this.

Oblivious, he lifted his leg on a wall.

We passed the homeless man again who hadn't yet decided what to do with his good fortune. He survived this time only thanks to my canine companion's stench.

When we reached my car several minutes later, I looked down at the dog with a scowl. "Why are you following me? What exactly do you expect me to do with you? I can't keep you. You do have some sense of what I am, don't you?"

A growl rumbled in the dog's chest.

"Exactly my point." I pointed a finger at him. "So…just stay here." I walked to my side of the car. "Stay." It was strange talking to a creature whose thoughts I couldn't hear and who had no reliable means to reply.

As soon as I opened the car door, the dog jumped inside and scrambled over the console to the passenger's seat. I looked inside, more than a little flabbergasted. "You have a lot of nerve!" He was sitting up and looking out the front window as if he owned the vehicle himself. "Fine, be that way. But if I fucking drain you, I'm not going to feel guilty. You may be more self-aware than other animals, but you're clearly just as dumb." Disgusted, I wiped off the muddy paw prints from my seat and got in.

I had to roll down all the windows in the car to tolerate the wet dog smell, not to mention his blood. I made the drive to Mount Hood National Forest as quickly as I could, pushing the car to its limits, the music of Tchaikovsky contrasting strangely with the dog's flapping gums as he leaned his head out the passenger side window. At least he wasn't getting carsick.

Avoiding the highways that veined through the forest, I found a skinny dirt road to park on. Though I'd lived on the outskirts of Portland for several years now, there were still lights near my home; the city was nearly inescapable even from that distance, the stars more difficult to see at night through the light pollution. Here, it was pitch black, and there were no inner voices filtering through to my head. Utter silence, utter darkness.

My eyes saw all the details that humans would miss at night, but it was nonetheless startling to see how different life was in a more rural area. I'd spent so many decades going from one city to another in search of humans to drink from that I hadn't enjoyed something so pastoral in years. It was soothing.

I let out a deep sigh. "Well, let's see if this works." I looked over at the smelly dog beside me. "You should really stay in the car. If you wander off, I'm not looking for you."

Talking to a dog. In my car. Unbelievable. Apparently after a century, there were still things that could surprise me.

I got out and looked around before sprinting off toward the east, heading for deeper, thicker forest. Running felt amazing, and before I had much time to think about what I was doing, I was moving as swiftly as I possibly could, pushing my leg muscles, feeling the tendons and ligaments move at my slightest command. Being a vampire, they would never grow tired or weaken or become injured.

There were many times I had run in my life, either to or from something, but this time felt more significant than all the others. It felt freeing after so many years of trying to rein in my darker, more animalistic side. As I ran, I realized that I had to find my own balance, one that would allow me to maintain what I could of my human nature, but also one that would allow me to channel the instincts that looked to threaten my humanity at every turn.

Give and take.

Yin and yang.

Balance. I needed balance.

Instinct was what stopped me cold in the middle of the forest. I smelled blood. More bitterly tangy than a human's, but still delicious, especially now, especially if I could hunt it. I listened as the blood gushed through valves that flickered open and closed like the shutter mechanism in a camera. My senses homed in on this one sound and scent, as if all else in the world depended on it.

And then I was running again, to something this time.

My brain, as highly evolved as it was, struggled to keep up with my body as I dove toward a stag that only had enough time to hear me and begin to turn away from my attack. It wasn't enough to save him, not even enough for me to give chase.

His body fell to the forest floor with mine, and a part of me cheered inwardly when he struggled. He did so with more passion and strength than any human I'd ever killed. A primal dance commenced, a pointed antler scraping along my shoulder and neck, shredding my shirt; my nearly indestructible skin remained unharmed.

Clamping my legs around his body, I jerked the writhing animal's neck to one side, growling as I exposed his thumping jugular vein. He snorted and gave a high-pitched cry, but his struggle was futile. My mouth opened with a hiss, and I clamped downward, tearing at his throat, through hair and hide, with sharp teeth.

The syrupy liquid that rushed over my tongue and down my burning throat tasted nearly as woodsy as its owner smelled, but it was not entirely unpleasant. I pulled and pulled, craving more, thirsty after nearly a month of starvation. He held nearly five liters of blood, about as much as what was in most human bodies.

When I finished, I sluggishly rose to my feet, my brain gradually returning from the frenzied haze. I noted that the burn was not soothed entirely by the blood. It remained—not a raging wildfire, but a smoldering bed of ash that I suspected might still catch fire easily around humans. I could live with that. I could control that. Unable to forget the incident with human food, I focused on my stomach, trying to determine whether the blood had settled properly.

It had.

I stared down at the stag's carcass in silent awe. "Thank you," I said to the lifeless body, suddenly overwhelmed and extremely grateful. I leaned down on one knee and closed the animal's eyes. I left him for the scavengers to enjoy.

Balance.

Another two deer later, I could almost feel the blood sloshing around in my body. I ran around the forest for another hour, enjoying the fresh dew and misty fog as morning neared. I felt like a new man. Or monster.

Semantics.

The dog was asleep in the passenger's seat when I returned, his chin resting on the center console, a steady flow of drool pooling on the leather interior. Disgusting as he was, I smiled at him—genuinely smiled. Whatever it was that screwed up his sense of self-preservation, I was grateful for that, too. Animals had always been so afraid of me that I'd rarely been near one for very long, certainly not long enough, or in the right conditions, for me to ever note that their blood could be even remotely appetizing, could be a substitute.

I had no desire to eat the dog, though I felt the smoldering burn flicker a little more brightly as I sat beside him. Frankly, I wanted to crush his silly little body with a hug.

I patted his head, instead, making sure to temper my strength and pressure. "Since it looks like I'm going to keep you, I suppose you need a name," I said as he woke and looked at me with strangely trusting, brown eyes.

A human memory flashed before my mind's eye of a dusty-haired, giant Irish Wolfhound playing with me and another boy whose name and facial details were lost to time and space. We were on a grassy hill that was covered in dandelion weeds. The memory faded to black as a voice I distantly recognized as my own from childhood called out to the dog. "Buster! C'mere, boy!" Perhaps he was named after Keaton, given the era.

Slightly less upbeat after that memory, I looked sideways at the dog beside me and shook my head. "You're not a Buster, I don't think."

The dog had slowly but surely begun snuffling at my shirt, obviously smelling the deer and blood. It was unbelievable that he was tenacious enough to go shoving his nose around the alpha male in the car. "You're very lucky I don't want to eat you," I told him as he grunted against my rib cage.

I named him Lucky.

February 2, 2005

While opening a music shop's swinging glass door, I saw my reflection. The last of my contact lenses had worn out under the venom hours ago, but I had decided to risk interacting with humans, red eyes and all.

But my eyes were not red.

They had turned golden!

Turning around, I left the shop and went straight home. I removed the covers from the bathroom mirrors and stared at myself in amazement.

October 19, 2005

Lucky and I led a quiet life. I walked him at five each morning and at eight every night. In doing so, I learned that what little about me there was that hadn't before lured women—and some men—was now negated by Lucky's overly-friendly presence. We walked in rural areas only, as a result. It wasn't that I wasn't a people person. It was that at any moment I might be a people-eating person.

I had a near-ritual of jerking off in the shower at ten o'clock at night, mainly due to boredom. That was the only downside to not hunting humans. This existence became even duller.

I composed during the day, while Lucky slept like a cat in the rectangular sun spot by the window, his ears twitching each time I changed key. I hunted weekly and brought home some of the deer carcasses, which I cleaned and cut for Lucky's dinner. It was much healthier for him than the dry food humans passed off as suitable for carnivorous canines.

I was heartbroken the day I realized the dumb mutt would not live with me forever.

March 10, 2006

Some days were still harder than others.

On these days, all I thought about was killing my maker.

When the opportunity came, I would kill him and everything dear to him for doing this to me.

November 13, 2007

No matter how much music I created, it would never be enough to bring them back to their loved ones.

I kept trying, but revisiting my sins could be so exhausting, even for one who didn't sleep.

September 2, 2008

Since changing my so-called life, I had sold the rights to most of my pieces to other pianists. Concert pianists played my music around the world, taking credit for notes they'd never penned. It satisfied me, however. My victims' songs needed to be heard, and I—forever frozen at twenty—could not share them myself.

Reclusive pianist Alexander Jang was one of the few musicians I truly enjoyed dealing with; he was a mild-mannered man, soft-spoken and only extroverted when in front of a piano. And though he never contradicted the assumptions that he was the composer of the works I gave him, he did not confirm these notions, either. All but agoraphobic, he only ventured out for two concerts a year, both in Seattle, where he lived. One was coming up soon, and he was fretting.

Troubled by my most recent composition, he emailed me, asking that I visit him. I laughed when I realized human hands would probably struggle playing what I had planned for that particular piece. I would need to change it slightly.

But did I want to see him in Seattle in the process?

I could handle being around humans now—mostly. That wasn't the issue. The issue was that I'd not been back to Seattle in the last twenty-one years. In the end, though, it felt like it was perhaps time to face the red-eyed demon I left behind there.

I sent a reply to Alexander.

TO: Alexander Jang
FROM: E.A. Masen
SUBJECT: Re: Rebecca's Lamentation

Dear Mr. Jang,

Some of "Rebecca's Lamentation" may indeed prove difficult. We can change it, if you'd like. I can be there by the twelfth to help you. While I'm there, why don't we go over all of the pieces I've sent, just so you feel comfortable for your upcoming concert?

Do you know of any inns in Seattle that permit dogs?

Sincerely,
Edward Masen

Author's Notes (June 15, 2010): Special thanks again to my pre-readers, atxcullen, Clairebo, Eyes of Topaz and rachael1042, as well as to Project Team Beta's ElleCC and gotellalice.

Author's Notes (January 24, 2011): Cleaning house / editing.