Petrify

45. The Pianist

The Pianist

While the other residents exchange gifts in the mid-morning, I seek out my tormentor, almost mindlessly, my thoughts of nothing else but him. I can’t leave him alone today, and especially not after what I’ve remembered. He doesn’t deserve another day alone.

I find him sitting by the window in his attic bedroom. Outside is gray with sleet, the dreariness spilling inside. His back is turned to me, a curve to his spine like he’s cradling something to his chest. His heart, maybe.

I know he can hear me enter.

Silence while he straightens, almost like he’s grounding his soul back in his body after flying off elsewhere. Like a demon, possessing his bones. I can feel his hesitation in the air, in the way he refuses to face me at first. He clears his throat. “How is Henri?”

To keep some distance, I sit on the old worn arm chair on the other side of the room. “I haven’t seen him since—”

“No.” A pause, his masked profile coming into view as he looks over his shoulder. “Does he enjoy it?”

The music? “Mostly, I believe so. He excels at everything I throw at him. Your parents—” My jaw snaps shut.

Baz just sighs. “He is… blameless in all of this.” There’s something to his voice. “And yet, I can’t help that I wish he were never born.”

Do you believe in curses, Mallary Doyle?

This strange affliction, that we have no control over another’s thoughts, another’s feeling about us. Henri did not ask to be born, and he did not ask for his brother’s anger, either. Just as Baz did not ask for his parent’s neglect.

“I don’t think that’s your fault,” I say, softly.

“Doesn’t it make me a monster?” Something sardonic seeps into his voice.

“There are other things that make you a monster.”

A self deprecating laugh rumbles low in his throat. “Yes. You’re right.” Only now does he turn fully to look at me. “For a while, when he was first born, it was envy. But now, I wish for his own sake he wasn’t born. This existence is…”

He trails off, thinking of the right word, but it just hangs in the air between us.

He wears a high-necked black sweater and wool trousers.

All of his clothing is higher-quality than anything I could afford, at least before my first paycheck.

His dark hair curls around the mask dutifully adorning his face.

He has the sleeves of his sweater rolled to his elbows, revealing the strong muscles of his arms, the bones of his wrists.

“Come here,” I say.

Framed by the gray window, he’s an angel of death. Then he's walking toward me, slowly, almost stalking forward like a wolf towards its kill.

I reach for him. And when he kneels before me, I do everything I can to hide my surprise. This man, capable of murder, and yet he kneels when I tell him to.

He leans into me, his chest between my knees, pressing his masked face to my sternum, those big hands bracketing my thighs. After a moment, he deflates, the tension disappearing from the muscles of his back under my hand.

The moment my fingers trail through his curls, his breath hitches, and then he’s relaxing even more, his arms loosely wrapped around my waist. He moans. “Mallary.”

“Bastien.” Barely a whisper.

I think back to the first few times he revealed himself to me—how I’d been scared to speak, scared he’d hurt me, or worse, never return. And somehow, somewhere, something changed between us, and now my heart needs him, yearns for him like oxygen. For the man under the mask.

He holds me in place, shuddering under my gentle touch. “You can’t leave me.”

“I won’t—”

“Please.” His whisper muffled into my shirt, fingers clutching at my sides. “Don’t lie to me Mallary, please. I can’t—I’m so tired of being so alone.” Chanting the word please like a prayer.

“Baz, I’m not…” My heart is cleaving in two. Because I don’t want to leave him.

But I can’t stay forever. Not if things go well at this party.

Isn’t that the whole point? That I will go on to make something of myself, finally?

I imagine myself playing onstage, for the whole audience to see, standing and bowing to their applause.

Having my own shows. Living, breathing music. Sustained by fame.

I’ll be able to live off my music. I’ll never have to worry about how long the takeout will last me.

If I leave, Bastien will be once more stuck inside of these hidden passages. Acting out for attention. Hurting people. Killing. Lingering in a past that no longer exists. At the whims of Mariane and Leo.

I can’t leave him here.

And yet he has promised me this dream.

I keep running my fingers through his hair, because I don’t know how much longer I’ll really be able to.

His grip tightens, fisting the fabric of my shirt, like he knows the directions of my thoughts. “There are places on this estate that no one else knows,” he whispers.

“Baz, you promised me,” I say, afraid to speak too loud. “What was the point of writing this music, if not to hear it played in front of a crowd? Isn’t that what you want?”

“Yes.” He looks up at me, on his knees. “But maybe it won’t hurt to keep you a little while longer.”

I swallow. “We’re on borrowed time already.” Though I’ve managed to checkmate Mariane for now, I’m not sure how long this will last.

His pupils dilate. “This ends when I say so.”

“Then it doesn’t have to end,” I whisper.

The words hang in the air, and he doesn’t refute them.

In a few days, I will perform his piece for dozens of rich men and women that could change my life, if they wanted.

Someone will fund me, someone will give me that one last connection I need for the dominos to fall in place.

I will return to New York, because that’s where the concert halls are, the recording studios, the executives.

I will play for bigger and even bigger crowds.

And all of it will be because of Bastien’s music.

“Do you… want to return to the city?” he asks.

I haven’t truly thought of an alternative. “I can’t stay here forever,” I say.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Yes. I think I would like to.”

If he doesn’t like my answer, he doesn’t say it. “What is New York like?”

“Loud. Too many things going on, all the time. Too many people.” I say. “But it’s also everything you could ever want. You can do anything. Whatever you’re looking for, it’s there, somewhere.”

He hums, thinking, his deep brown eyes staring directly through me. “All the ideal conditions for someone to hide.”

The waltz is incomplete, and though the performance is not far away, I don’t worry.

Especially not when he gathers up some loose, blank sheets of paper with his pen and ushers me to the upright against the wall.

The keys are split and yellowed, and the wires are in need of a tuning, the notes just off key enough to sound disjointed—haunted.

He sits next to me. And then he begins playing, without a second glance at the sheet music, starting at the first measure. Out of tune, pressing the keys with an assuredness that can only come from the song’s composer.

One, two, three. One, two, three.

I know what comes next, after so many weeks perfecting what’s been written. I shut my eyes, listening to the music that surrounds us, dissonant like a lullaby from an old music box.

He stops, the silence as cacophonous as what came before.

“Stand up,” he says. His eyes are hooded behind the mask, shadowed and burning.

I do as he says.

“Take off your clothes.”

Warmth floods through my center.

He watches from the bench as I slowly slide the leggings down my thighs. I lift the sweater over my head, exposing my breasts, until I’m left only in my underwear. I only pause for a second, to see if he’ll give me further instruction.

But the look in his eyes tells me exactly what he wants.

I slide off the thin material, until I am naked.

He sits back on the bench. There’s a metal clinking of his belt buckle, and then his cock is free.

He is always as eager for me as I am for him.

“Sit.”

My mouth goes dry. He’s silent as I step closer, leaving just enough room for me to slide between his body and the piano.

It’s erotic, watching him grip the bottom of the shaft, give it a few pumps, before I’m standing between his legs.

I brace myself on his thighs, gasping when the head of his cock slides through the wet heat of my pussy.

He grips my hips and forces me down.

My back arches before I even take all of him, crying out at the intrusion, jolting and hitting a few discordant keys of the piano.

He groans in satisfaction. “I feel the most human when I’m inside of you.”

He’s pushing my thighs apart, so my knees are outside of his, and spreads me wider, almost as far as my hips will allow. “Baz.”

“Fuck me, Mallary.”

Then I understand. He needs this—for the music. He needs me, needs the ecstasy my body can give him, the little death, to finish his funereal dance.

His breaths turn ragged when I begin to move in his lap. I circle my hips, best I can, overwhelmed by the deep nudging of his cock inside of me.

After only a few seconds, his hands leave my body, reaching around me for the keys. His masked face is buried in the crook of my neck. He begins to play again. Our song fills the air, from the beginning, a little slower this time.

“Yes, good.” He hums.

An exquisite burn has begun in my thighs. I grind against him, my fingers finding my clit, and I know I'm already seconds away from coming.

One, two, three.

One, two, three.

He never misses a note from the melody, his left hand hitting every chord.

I lean back against him, breathless, slowing the circling of my hips.

Each note resonates through me, and the harder he presses the keys, the more intense my pleasure.

It’s too good, sitting on him like this and controlling the pace.

I notice as I slow, so does the music. He rocks forward once, his thighs tightening beneath me, chasing my hips.

“Keep going,” he whispers.

A spark of defiance blazes in my chest. Maybe this is a trait of the girl who comes out when I’m sleeping. I stop moving altogether.

“Mal.”

This little act of spite for all the secrets he’s kept from me. He didn’t tell me about my sleepwalking. He didn’t tell me Leo and Mariane wanted me dead from the start.

He can’t see my smile at the flustered noise he makes. “Mallary.”

Though it’s hard to form words when my cunt is stretched around him, I sigh, heady with pleasure. I could stay like this for days, I think, tethered to him. Isn’t that what he wants? “Let me take my time with you.”

For a brief second, I wonder if on some distant day, he’ll think about this moment when he’s fucking someone else.

But there won’t be someone else.

Slowly I start grinding into him again. Where we meet is slick and sticky with his arousal and mine.

His playing continues as I move. This is our song.

He wrote this for me.

I’m dizzy, my heart fluttering too quick against my ribs. I chase my climax, moving quicker, grinding harder, feeling so full I might scream. My fingers keep circling my clit, each shock of pleasure spreading through my thighs, my spine. I reach up, tangling my fist in his hair, holding him to me.

The song is punctuated by my moans. He breathes heavily, and I keep going, wanting to hear his resolve chip away, wanting to break his focus.

I do this to him. I make him desperate.

The static builds in my core until I’m crying out, trembling against his body as my orgasm wrings every last bit of pleasure from my limbs. I come, coiled around him, my cunt clenching down on him so tight I see stars.

“Fuck.” He groans through his teeth, his bruising fingers leaving the keys to clamp onto my hips and hold me in place.

His cock twitches inside me, and I revel in it, in knowing I’m the only one to take his cum like this, the only one that can make him this desperate.

I’m the only one that can give him this.

After a moment, he leans over and scrawls a few things out on the sheet of music, the pen scratching the paper. He taps a few keys, playing a few measures.

He wraps his arms around me again. The movement nudges his still erect cock in my sensitive pussy.

I squirm, still catching my breath.

“It’s finished, I think.” Sated and spent, he looks at me with admiration. He looks at me with the warmest affection. It frightens me.

“You’ll have to play it to be sure,” he says, “but—the song. It’s done.”