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one

e He can't stand the sight of that piano in the corner.

The rest of the mess in his room is at least palatable. The piles of laundry on the floor are background noise. The curtains and blinds have been gathering dust together for weeks now. Even the bong on his nightstand, long overdue for a cleaning and caked with resin on the inside, no longer stands out when he enters the bedroom. He is grateful he never has to worry about having guests over who might see it and thinks of anything but the little sting accompanying that first thought.

Anyway, the piano. That damned piano. How long has it been since he last cleaned it? How long since his fingers danced over the keys, spitting out cacophonous noise until someone decided he was good enough to keep going?

It haunts him. The piano, its uncleanliness, and the judgement of his former audiences. These days, the closest thing he has are the faces pinned above the piano itself. There are no more than three of them, separated across two photographs held in place with wall putty. The second photo, pinned above the latter half of the keyboard, is of two women. One of them, whose hair is only slightly paler than it is these das, currently signs off on his paychecks. The other is the piano's original owner, and is someone who has not existed for a very long time now.

Conversely, the one on the left-hand side of the keys watches over the lower, bassier notes. Its sole subject waits, eternally smiling, for his old student's hands to go back across the keyboard; to go back in time and give him one final performance.

He cannot look at the second photo, at the blonde woman whose smile is the same as the man in the first photo's, and feel anything but guilt.