My fingers are rusty and cold and numb, and it hurts. The pain is almost crippling as they move over the keys. But the sound that floods the room is such a welcome relief that I push through it.
I push through it until my movements are fluid and my voice is humming along with the notes. And just like that, everything else fades away.
My fear is gone, and I am playing again.
I think of the notes. The notes he used to write me. And his words.
Sing me a song, with words only I can hear.
This iswhat he wanted all along.
When I open my eyes again, he’s there. In the doorway. My fingers pause, and he shakes his head. The room is silent now. The projector turned off. And I’ve lost the will to fight.
This is my chance to kill him. To claw his eyes out. But I can’t move.
I’m so tired. So numb. All I want to do is sleep.
“Keep playing,” he tells me.
I stare at him. It would be so easy to give in. To do what he wants and stop this pain. This torture. But I can’t bring myself to give up.
Not yet.
So, I stop playing.
He leaves the room again. The projector does not come on again. Not that night. Or any after.
Instead, I am entombed in silence. Silence so deafening, it is a different animal altogether. I start to imagine sounds that aren’t real. I start to see shadows that I know aren’t real. I feel like I’m going insane all over again, and I don’t know which is worse.
The room is pitch black now. There is no light to be found in this prison. Twenty-four hours a day, I sit in darkness.
I talk to myself. I pick at my skin. Bugs crawl all over me. I hear him in the room with me, breathing. At some point, I hear a baby crying. When I seek out the source of the noise, it disappears entirely.
He brings me food, but I never know when. I can’t see him. I crawl around the floor like a dog, seeking it out. Always the same thing, over and over again.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
I eat them and want for more. My stomach is so empty that it is caving in on me. Sometimes, I catch myself biting my lip just to taste the blood.
I am feral.
Wild.
An animal.
And this is what he wanted.
I cry. I wail. I mutilate myself on the walls, cutting and scratching my skin just to feel something different. I haven’t showered since I’ve been here. I go to the bathroom in the bucket, like a heathen. I get my period and have no choice but to use some of my precious drinking water to clean myself with.
I am disgusting. Ashamed. Cold and lonely and tender in a way that I never thought was possible.
At some point, my mind fractures completely. I feel it happen.
I am broken.
And I am willing to do anything. Anything at all. Anything he says. Just to stop this madness. So with my last scraps of remaining energy, I crawl to the piano stool and pull myself from the floor. I sit down and will my fingers to move. They are stiff and painful and bloody.
But I play.