Been a while since I've written anything. In any event, this is a story I had made up quite a few years ago. It's been a while, but I suddenly felt the urge to write. Nothing new or creative here, but its just when you get that feeling you want to put pen to paper (Or in this case, fingertips to keyboard). In any event, here goes nothing. He was a dying breed, he knew. There was little call for his line of work anymore, in this era. Who needed a professional pianist? Those few who truly succeded, they performed in places like Carnegie Hall, but they were people who didn't just play pieces, they created masterpieces in their own name.
What money he earned through his passion came from teaching children how to play the piano, just one to one hourly sessions, little basic stuff that never really came to fruition. It always frustrated him to see young children so bored and so uninterested in music, forced to by parents who sat there with glazed eyes at how 'talented' their children were. But it paid the rent, and that was all that was important.
Ah, but how he wished he could one day be successful. Not for the money, of course. Those musicians who wanted only wealth were soulless, in his opinion. How he longed one day to be heard far and wide, with a masterpiece that could move souls! Nothing could put the emotions that a pianist could play onto paper. How could you move a man to experience the feeling of a storm as William Tell did through words, or bring a man to tears like Mozart had done several times over?
And so, day by day, he would sit and play. A few notes, just here and there, 'testing the waters' as he liked to put it. What emotions would he bring out? But always, day by day, he would be interrupted. He didn't earn much, and the neighborhood he stayed in wasn't exactly the nicest or the safest of areas. Too frequently the sounds of a crying woman and a man yelling in the apartment next to him would disturb him, the dischord of noise ruining whatever song he was trying to frantically to compose. Once he had tried to be a hero, to knock upon that door wanting to tell the man to keep it quiet. But what had come out was a large hulk of a man that reminded him of an obese frankenstein, and from the look on that man's face, it was clear that the composer would have likely ended up just like the woman who was crying in the back room of that apartment...probably beat up even worse.
Oh, how the composer wanted so desperately to be famous. He swore every day that one day, he would play a song that would move a crowd of people to tears.
The composer had a second source of income, a once-a-week deal. A bar offered free live music, and that was where he came in. Once a week, every friday, he would play to a bunch of drunkards who were more interested in alcohol than anything he had to offer. That didn't mean he compensated with crappy playing...he played his heart out, mostly for himself.
But this friday, he felt a pair of eyes upon him. There, in the corner of the bar, hidden behind a red-lipsticked smile, he could see her watching him. In the midst of the noise and the chaos, the rabble and the storm of conversations, she was watching him play, and he could not help but notice her.
When he finally managed to muster up the courage to talk to her, he found out her name was Rose. It suited her just fine, and she had a small tattoo on her right cheek of her namesake. She was everything he thought about himself. Cultured, artistic, just another old soul forced into this modern day life of nightclubs and drugs, alcohol and crime. They flirted and they laughed, they smiled and even held hands. But as they were about to leave the bar, a fight had begun to broke out, and before he knew it, he found a bottle wildly swung straight into his face.
Saturday morning was when he regained conciousness, or at least, he thought it must have been saturday. Everything seemed to ache, and yet, he was on his bed. Patched up it seemed, and somehow returned to his home. Had everything been a dream? Was meeting up with Rose, the one person whom he thought could finally understand him, nothing more than an illusion like some mirage in the desert?
His life, was, after all, certainly back to normal. The sounds of a woman crying, of some sort of fighting and even furniture tossed around could be heard in the apartment next to him. Certainly, the grim situation of the slums he lived in was still there.
But hah, it seemed, not everything was false and untrue. For there, written in red lipstick upon his bathroom mirror were the words 'Friday, 9 Pm'.
The week went by surprisingly fast, despite having something to look forward to. And yet day by day, he was unable to finish his masterpiece. This young composer could never find the right notes, the right tune. The talent was there, to be sure, and yet having burned through a hundred tapes of recording, he could never find something he felt was moving enough.
And when Friday had come, he made all the careful preparations. He had gone to the barber, just a day before, and gotten himself a trim. Painstaking care had been done to his selection of clothing, and to complete the entire setup...fresh red roses, just like her name.
He even went an hour early, seated there at a table like a customer and not at the piano at the bar. Though the week had come and gone, that last one hour, it seemed, felt like an age and a day.
Minute by minute dragged on, until 9 o'clock came. And still she had not arrived. Perhaps, he thought to himself, she was getting ready for it. It was common after all, for a woman to be alittle bit late when it came to a date.
10 o'clock came, and she had not arrived. Traffic perhaps? Cabs were so hard to get these days.
Try as he could, but when the clock struck midnight, he picked up his coat, and slowly walked home. The roses were dumped into a can, and he guessed, the illusion of a dream-come-true as well. The roads seemed particularly cold and empty that night, the cold sharpened like a knife by the disappointment of a night turned horribly wrong.
Lights however, permeated the silence of the night. Blue and red glared at the front of the apartment he was staying in, and the composer could not help but keep moving. In these areas, such a sight was common, and it was always best to mind your own business otherwise the police would never leave you alone with questions.
It came however, as a surprise to see his neighbor being dragged down. The large hulk of a man seemed like a beaten giant, as several police shoved his bold head down into the back of a car. Snippets of the conversation between the policement were heard in the composer's ear, as he passed on by.
"Beat her to death, the poor thing. His own daughter no less. I heard from one of the medics she was sexually abused as well, probably with a knife or something sharp."That's one sick and twisted fuck, let me tell you that. Such a pretty thing."But something made the composer stop. It felt like a shiver down his spine, as he watched the medics wheel on a trolley by. For the name on the tag listed upon the bed, was the name Rose.
"Excuse me officer, but could I see the woman for just a minute?"
The paramedic was kind enough to pull apart the sheets, just for a minute, even though the police had shook his head no. This of course, made the cop want to launch an interrogation.
"Is this woman in any way related to you?"
The composer shook his head of course. "No, she's not. Just a neighbor whom I never knew."
It was a strange night, to be sure. The police wrapped up events nicely. The abusive father would be tried, for the death and rape of his daughter. But though official records never stated anything about it, there was something that everyone there, from paramedic to policeman, from curious neighbors who had come out to onlookers on the street, there was something that nobody would ever forget.
For on the night of that young woman's death, a melancholic tune had come from an apartment upstairs. Played on an old piano, the notes had somehow moved to tears everyone who heard it. And though noone knew the name of such a skillful masterpiece, and never heard it again, those who had heard it on that fateful night...never forgot the way it moved them.
