Page 33 of Petrify

I’ve grown to expect it. I’ve grown to anticipate it.

When I finally sit at the piano, the dozens of thoughts whirling around my head, all fighting to be the loudest, go quiet. This is my favorite, when I do not even have to think, becoming a conduit for the music.

My fingers dance before I even know what I’m playing, my mind slow to catch up as the possession begins. No warm up, no preamble, just the waltz, automatic, like I am a wound up music box. The melody falters a few moments later, my fingers stumbling.

My awareness is suddenly heightened as I come back to my body.

I know he’s behind me.

“Beautiful,” he says into the stark quiet, once the last note rings out. “Again.”

My heartthumpsto the tempo,Andante, then speeding up quicker. I squeeze my eyes shut.

“I don’t have?—”

There’s a shifting of air right next to my face, and when my eyes snap open, the sheet music is on the stand. With an added twenty or so measures.

“You’re nervous.”

I refuse to turn around. Torn between two desires, to see him and please him, and to beg him to leave me alone. But I made a deal, and I’m not sure he’ll leave me, no matter how nicely I ask.

At night, I’m yours.

“Breathe, Mallary. Nothing matters now but the music. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”

I’m going to make the same mistakes. I’m too trusting, too naive. Jason promised me so many things too, if only I gave him everything. And I?—

I want this. All that Bastien is promising, I want it so badly my chest constricts with misery. I want it so badly that I’ll doanything.

My teeth bite down on my lip hard enough to draw blood. I square my shoulders, straighten my spine, take a settling breath. Put my hands in position and then begin for the second time. Eyes scanning the measures ahead, sight reading the new lines.

Each time I play through the piece, I learn something new about the song. Like a blossoming friendship, the song becomes more familiar with each repeated measure.

I let the possession take me over again, floating back into myself. Here, inside of the music, I am safe, surrounded bynothing but harmonies. Here, the outside world ceases to exist. Jason doesn’t exist. My time at university, and everything that came after, is just a blip. Henri and our lessons are only fond memories. Here, for as long as I am inside the music, I am who I want to be. I am known.

And then the last note reverberates, ending the connection, my foot on the pedal, until it disappears into nothing. The melody is cut off, the music stopping at a point in the song without any sort of resolution. It hasn’t been written yet.

I don’t remember the last few minutes, I don’t remember the new measures of the song, but I know I played them.

“It’s too fast.”

I open my eyes. Tears brim my lashes. “You wroteAndante.”

“And I was mistaken. Slow it down.”

My brain rebels against this, eyes scouring the page.

“What are you trying to perform?” he muses, after a few moments of silence. He still stands behind me. “A feeling? A memory?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Then that’s what you must decide.”

A sudden hysterical laughter wants to burst from my throat at hownormalthis feels. My teacher, this composer, aghost.

Only last night he was in myroom. He’s watched me when my fingers were between my legs. He’s stalked me through this house.

And here we are, discussing tempos and intention. “What feeling would you have me play?”