Lost In Temptation

6. You Are Not Alone

Elizabeth

Sitting at my piano, I let my limited imagination attempt to compose something, fingers moving across the delicate keys to try and bring any form of life to the feelings going through my mind. Of course that never worked for me, and soon I got frustrated at myself and tried to slam my hands down, but fear of the discordant noise that would bring about stopped me.

Sound was my greatest strength, and my weakness.

Instead of composing, I simply moved to things that I knew calmed me, compositions already written that were able to fill my mind, to make my focus on controlling my hands to complete the score without failing or deviating from the written notes. In human terms, I suppose you could compare it to stopping an anxiety attack by keeping each individual task in your mind at a time, never letting the next one take over before it was turn for it. It was hard, for someone with my mind and how I always had as many things on the go as I could, but my piano was something that had always managed the task.

My main concerns were take up by moving my hands correctly, then my feet going back and forth between the pedals at the bottom, and my mind bringing forth the sheet music from my Archive, as well as possibly the lyrics if the piece happened to be Operatic, or simply a song that I had learned to placate my ex husband, or my brother. The sounds weren't always what mattered to me in regards to the music, though I loved the fluidity and simplicity of the piano, which in itself was far from a simple instrument, what with the strings carefully strung within, but how the notes managed to flow and move, if something in it was so perfectly balanced between song and silence that it seemed to disturb the air balance in some way that changed the very nature of the room it was played in.

That was happening as I played one of the very few songs from Earth that I learned to play for myself, for both the simple way it played on all fronts, and for how the lyrics were something that reminded me of all the wars I had been a part of. Be they physical, or mental.

Another head hangs lowly
Child is slowly taken
And the violence caused such silence
Who are we mistaken

But you see it's not me
It's not my family
In your head, in your head
They are fighting
With their tanks and their bombs
And their bombs and their guns
In your head, in your head
They are cryin'

In your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie, hey, hey
What's in your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie, hey, hey, hey, oh

Dou, dou, dou, dou
Dou, dou, dou, dou
Dou, dou, dou, dou
Dou, dou, dou, dou

Another mother's breakin'
Heart is taking over
When the violence causes silence
We must be mistaken

It's the same old theme
Since nineteen-sixteen
In your head, in your head
They're still fightin'
With their tanks and their bombs
And their bombs and their guns
In your head, in your head
They are dyin'

In your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie, hey, hey
What's in your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie, hey, hey, hey
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Hey, oh, ya, ya-a

As I said.

Music has a habit of even affecting something like me, to the point I barely finished the last line before I had to bite my tongue so hard I tasted the metallic tang of my blood as more trickled down from my left eye, contrasting the tears from the right as then the room flickered. Like a computer simulation.