Broken Piano

The sound was hollow. The clunk of the pedals, the soft thud of felted piano keys. There was no melody, no music. Only the mechanical workings of the piano, hammering out its silent, messy beat. Mouse had always heard those sounds as background noise, something that lived within another noise. Alone, they were strange. Sad. Maddening. He tried to pull music from the rhythm, a song hidden beneath the padding and clunking. But there was nothing.

Some time passed. Mouse’s hand tightened around the heavy tumbler glass. His eyes squeezed shut, as if to concentrate enough to trap some thread of sound inside his mind. A sharp ache bloomed across his forehead. He had been clenching his jaw without noticing. He opened his eyes. The bar was dim, smoky. Cigar smoke seemed to hang low in the air. Still, the padding and clunking. Still, no notes. The sound was difficult to listen to, and impossible to block out.

It now made no sense. How could those same keys, those pedals, ever make music? Even with melody, how could this mechanical thing possibly work?

He scanned the room. Couples laughed, groups chattered, drinks clinked. No one else seemed bothered. His grip on the glass tightened again. Further down the long stretch of black marble, an old tortoise sat alone, tapping his fingers in rhythm. Tapping like he could hear something Mouse couldn’t.

Mouse stared.

Click. Click. Click. The tortoise’s fingers aligned with the piano’s thuds and clunks. Somehow, impossibly, it made sense. For a moment, Mouse could sort of hear the phantom notes, a tune almost implied by connection of completely unrelated things. It made his chest knot.

He snapped his gaze back to the piano.

He knew the guy playing it. Every Thursday. Mouse had liked his music once. His brain grasped for meaning, but there was none. His piano was almost silent. The air in the bar shifted. It was subtle, like something deflating rapidly. Then suddenly, silence. Complete. Deafening.

No more voices. No clinks. No laughter. The felted key presses had drained away. Only the tonal clunks of the pedals and the dry clicking of the tortoise’s fingers, like bones on stone tapped out the none exsistant tune together.

Thud. Click, click, click.
Thunk. Click, click.
Thud. Click. Click. Click.
Thunk. Click. Click.

The silence was oppressive, thick and unnatural. Mouse looked around. People still moved their mouths, still smiled, still gestured with their hands, but no sound came. Nothing but those two unrelated noises, dancing with each other in a chaotic and gross tango that just made his breath short.

He looked down at his drink. His chest rose and fell too quickly. Shallow. Sharp. He couldn’t catch a full breath. He pressed a hand against his sternum, the other clutching the glass like he was holding on for the sake of his life.

Thud. Click. Click. Click.
He tried to breathe. Nothing.

Thud.
Another try. Still nothing.
Click.

Each attempted breath was cut short, timed perfectly to the tortoise’s tapping. Click.

Mouse’s vision narrowed. The edges of the bar faded to black.

Click.
Gasp.
Thunk.
Gasp.
Click.
Gasp.

Darkness poured in to his vision like ink in water. Mouse felt sure the combined mechanical percussion was playing him now. His own breath had fallen into sync with the tortoise and the  machine. Each click was telling him to breathe. Each thud was time passing with no breath. There was no music. Only a long, slow mechanical lack of relief.

Click.
Gasp.
Thunk.
Gasp.

Click.

Fin