Grey Shadows

The music lilts through the house, soft and sweet. The electric piano sits with its back to the front window, its plug nestled into the wall just below that of the light peering overtop of the music rest. Several large oak trees shade the view of the street out front. The woman at the keys stares at music with unseeing eyes. She knows the tune. She wrote it.

The brightness outside the window dims. Grey shadows swallow the light from left to right with alarming speed. Raindrops fall, sucking the blue from the sky on their way down and splatter it into the grass. Everything is turning ashen, losing color, even the music, which fades from innocent beauty into a melancholic sigh. Raindrops fall from her eyes as the tune melts from joy to sadness. It isn’t the tune she wants to play, but somehow she cannot lift the rhythm or modulate out of this minor key.

The pattering rain gushes. Wind whistles through the trees, bending and snapping branches. The clouds part with a flash of lighting. The lights in the house go out.

With the loss of power, the music ceases. In the dark a faint click plods along, gentle rhythmic thumps and springs of weighted plastic keys. She’s still playing. The darkness of the storm swallows her wholly, until the melody she knows is barely an echo in her head. Her fingers know their part. They continue to obediently move in hopes the power will soon return.

© Rachel Svendsen 2015