A thundering crescendo of notes take flight as lissome fingers hammer worn, uneven keys, darting furiously over the blurring black and white. The sound is deafening against the player’s straining heart; each individual wave of increasing decibels pulls the pianist closer to the instrument. The pianist’s erratic breath ghosts over the keyboard, echoing the quiet pattern of harmonic chords the left hand strikes. The melody races up to higher keys, rising in octaves and slowing in tempo, then draws to a stop at a single C sharp for one beat, two beats, three beats ….
Four.
Lightning cracks, and with shaking hands, the pianist begins to drown.
Water leaks from the basin of the piano, spilling onto the floor. It drips from the ceiling, condenses in the cooling air, seeps out of the floorboards. Dripping into the pianist’s nose and eyes, it dampens the player’s hair and runs down flushed cheeks. Broken minor chords swim through the water at the pianist’s feet as perturbed trills skid into whole and half notes, followed by darkening glissandi as the tone changes from dreamy allegretto to unsteady presto agitato.
The melody dips into lower octaves as water swirls around the pianist’s ankles, soaking into muted white socks and flooding polished shoes. Icy, angry liquid gushes into the crevices between every achromatic key, while the water at the pianist’s feet is limpid, clear and threatening. Its current tugs at the pianist’s legs, rising past shivering knees and encircling the player’s waist. The water’s surface is dangerously close to the keyboard; it dares to swallow every note whole.
Despondent broken chords fade into a ghost of their former strain, their emotion lessening as the water level rises. The pianist’s heart slows. The currents diminish and then disappear.
The keyboard falls victim to the waves, and the pianist’s hands glide over it in slow motion through the water. The thrum of drowning notes is only heard in faint murmurs from the
piano strings, or felt in dull vibrations above the thunder of the spray. Water levels meet the alabaster ceiling, rising over the head of the pianist, finally, and the player’s hair billows gently in the currents. The pianist’s lungs scream for a last breath of air as darkness pools in the corners of the room. It reaches toward the piano, crawling at the edges of the pianist’s blurred vision. Heart throbbing, chest aching, the pianist blinks through the water and stabs at the keys, pushing at one final crescendo.
The water stirs as vibrations of the piano strings tear through the liquid. The player’s lungs fill with water at every note, drop by drop; and the player’s fingers dart down to the lower, deeper octaves. Darkness sweeps across the floor, gathering under the pedals and the pianist’s feet. The melody wavers, trembling with the hands of the player while shadows swim over the piano’s dimming frame. The water ripples, tugging at the clothes of the pianist, who reaches, at long last, an ultimate C minor chord and gives in to the dying current.
The pianist is consumed.