A city stands unchanging

Its walls are red

It's dark and quiet. In front of me is a cathedral so tall its roof drowns in the night sky. I know its walls are red, although there's no reason for me to be so sure of it, as the only light on the scene is an unnatural glow of the moon. Below me, the ground is paved with uneven stone and wet from rain. The air is damp and fresh, but there's no wind.

I have no memory of how I got here, but I'm where I'm supposed to be. The cathedral wants me to open the wooden doors and step inside, and I obey without question. Inside, daylight shines through the stained glass, biblical characters follow my every move with their empty eyes. In front of me and behind me are thousands of golden pipes - a massive organ, little angel figures staring at me from its impressive height. I sit in the front row. The music starts without any warning. Tears stream down my face the second I hear the low, slow hum of the instrument.

I know the song, although I've never heard it. It makes me remember the night of our wedding, the moment on the balcony when I, cigarette in hand, looked at the city below. The air was stiff and heavy, it smelled of ozon. It was a calm and quiet night. Above and below me, other smokers stood in some kind of silent solidarity. I waited for joy to overwhelm me, for everything to finally click and make perfect sense, but it never came. Instead, that night I accepted the truth I've been denying for years: marriage could not make me feel whole, it just made me a liar. There was no running from it, the craving in my heart would never be satisfied with a person. I was to live as I am, incomplete and grieving the life I never had, until death takes my pain away.

The organ doesn't stop to let me reminisce. My tears don't concern it as another song starts playing. It's the song my heart sang the moment I chose to become a lawyer. Then, I thought, I would be able to afford to keep music as a hobby in my life. And I was. There was a piano in our house, but I hardly had the energy to play. It didn't feel right to disturb it for ten minutes of mediocre performance.

It shifts into the song I dreamed of playing on the big stage in front of my family, the song I imagined every time I thought of a life that was stolen from me. The cherub figures start moving, playing their fake instruments, mocking my useless attempts at creating music with their little pantomime. At first they can only robotically repeat the same three poses, but slowly their movements become smoother and more complicated. It terrifies me to think of what they are, but I can't look away, even for a second. Whatever happens, I'm determined to stay until the concert ends. There's no bigger insult to a musician than walking out during a performance.

The angel that previously sat, unmoving, above the pipes, slowly turns its head to look at me. Its beautiful golden hair shines in the sunlight as it jumps down. The building shakes from impact, but there's no damage to the floor.

The angel gets closer, its glossy nose almost touching mine. Its eyes look just like hers. They were so big, so dark, so beautiful. They looked at me with love and adoration, and I looked back with empty smiles. The angel puts its hand on my shoulder, and I gasp when it touches my neck, hard and cold. Her hands were so pale you could see veins through the thin skin. She played piano, too, which was why I chose her. When she played for me in the quiet of our apartment, I loved her back. There was nothing more intimate between us than those hours of playing to each other without saying a word, the silent understanding hanging between us that nothing could ever compare to what we have with our instrument. I was jealous of her, of course. The thought of her caressing the keys when I wasn't around made blood boil in my veins. I couldn't fully accept that she had the same relationship with music as I had, couldn't bear to believe that her passion ran as deep as mine. And her love for me was proof that her heart wasn't fully in it. It filled me with a sense of pride, to be the thing that ruined her perfect harmony with our passion.

The angel takes my hand, its movement stiff and shaky. It leads me somewhere, but never breaks our eye contact even for a moment. When my hand slips from its, I find myself in front of the organ console and the angel is back in its original position, frozen like it never left. There's nobody there. I knew it already. This is my place, the organ begging me to join it and become a part of its complicated mechanism, to become its brain and beating heart. And I obey. I've always been better with piano, but practice makes perfect, and I have all the time in the world.