and Mother would be there and so would Uncle Matt and Aunt Bea and her grandmother and grandfather and they would clap for her and smile with pride as she played her heart out. Because she would play like her life depended on it. Like the fate of the world depended on it. Somehow she had to make everything right again. Her torn and bloodied fingers splayed across the keys and slowly began to carve out a tune. It was an original composition, probably the last thing she’d ever compose. To her it sounded like death. Like ripping flesh and screams. The demons loved it.
Lisa began to sing. Her voice was not lovely. It was a melodic moaning that rose occasionally to a shriek. Tears and sweat commingled with blood and decorated her face like war-paint as her sorrow and agony vibrated in the air. The demons were now crowding around the piano, listening to Lisa’s dissonant assault on the piano keys. Her broken fingernails littered the floor at her feet and two of her fingers snapped as she slammed her fingertips down on the keys with all her remaining might again and again. The creatures winced as her shrill cries scraped her throat raw. They were all awake now, staring at her. She began a new composition, a new symphony, drawing on all her pain, fear, and sorrow. She closed her eyes and pulled the music up from the depths of her, tapping into her genetic memory to find the very rhythms and melodies of creation. Her spirit soured, bourn aloft on the powerful notes she created and danced with the very soul of the earth. She tapped into the rhythm of life, the very harmonies of matter and energy, the beat of the universe and played creation and destruction simultaneously, the two dissonant melodies competing against each other and building to a violent crescendo that shook the ground at her feet and upheaved heaven and hell. The demons began to scream.
Blood seeped from Lisa’s nose slowly at first and then in a ghastly deluge that splashed onto the keys turning the ivory to a crimson hell. She played harder, snapping more fingernails and breaking more of her own fingers as she pounded the keys. Blood wept from her eyes, dripping strawberry red tears down her face as the very music she created began to undo her. Blood leaked from her ears, from beneath her cuticles, from between her legs. She gagged on it, gargling it in her throat, pausing to spit it out as she continued to sing in strident ululations that melded with her discordant melody into something terrifying. The demons covered their ears, shrieking in mortal terror, inhuman agony as they too were unmade by Lisa’s music. Their ears exploded in their heads, eyes popped like eggs in a microwave, flesh split like over ripe fruit. Lisa continued to play as they thrashed and convulsed in fathomless anguish. Her tunes slashed through their souls as the atoms and molecules that composed them began to dance. Lisa continued to play. Her music vibrated to the very core of the earth. She could hear all the souls in hell join her chorus, the sounds of their annihilation adding to the symphony of destruction. The earth cracked wide and bled its molten blood onto the surface, scorching the world barren. Lisa continued to play. Her latest composition…creation’s end, Armageddon. Lisa set the apocalypse to notes and strides, screaming and shrieking a melodious death knell until her own soul danced off into the ether and the earth returned to a state of utter silence.
About The Author
Wrath James White is a former World Class Heavyweight Kickboxer, a professional Kickboxing and Mixed Martial Arts trainer, distance runner, performance artist, and former street brawler, who is now known for creating some of the most disturbing works of fiction in print.
Wrath’s two most recent novels are The Resurrectionist and Yaccub’s Curse . He is also the author of Succulent Prey , Everyone Dies Famous In A Small Town , The Book Of A Thousand Sins , His Pain and Population Zero . He is the
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