1019 Reads | Published over 10 years ago
It never cried when she was looking, the house. When the light fled, day in and day out, she could hear the walls begin to mourn. Mourning what she could not say, but in the creaking of the wood, and the wail of the wind through the broken glass and warped boards of its windows, she knew the old house hurt.
In the darkness she never saw the house cry, though weep she knew it did. Daylight would edge its way in past the half boarded windows, warming the mildewed carpet, not stirring her from her perch on the piano bench. Then, she could see the stains, paint chipped scars torn from ceiling to floor, the carpet peeled away and the varnish rubbed clean from the wood beneath; tear stains, the raw red face of a weeping child.
And so she would play, play each day to soothe the crying, to wipe away the tears with gentle strokes across the ivory keys of an old piano. There in the warm sun of the afternoon, she would forget about the mildew and the creaking for a while lounging in the board split beams of light.
She played until her breathe began to float in choked grey clouds above the piano, the light sliding back out the window again as her hands grew stiff in the cold of the encroaching night.
Story written by