The Composer

Part One: Silver-Tongued Liar

Somewhere deep in a mountainous forest where the wild nature was dominating the rocky environment there was a white house glaring down at a lake with a waterfall pouring into it. It wasn't an enormous building but it did have a detailed layout which made it seem like it was bigger from the inside.

One of the rooms had a laboratory feel-- it was fully tiled in white, having a single table and a pulse--monitoring device. There was also a girl laid down on the table, in a deep slumber. She had a small body structure, long silver hair and pale white skin covered with a few bruises. As she opened her dark brown eyes, she confusedly looked at the lab coat she was wearing. Suddenly, the door opened and a tall person resonating with an uncanny familiarity stepped in wearing a black dusty coat, carrying a food tray and a change of clothes for her. The girl was scared as she couldn't remember anything, not even her own name, but the guy noticed this and tried to calm her down:

'Good morning, my name is Adam! I know you might be afraid but don't worry, I don't have any intentions of harming you. I found you passed out in the woods around my house. I brought you here so I could treat your wounds. Luckily for you, there were only bruises, nothing major. Also, here's some clothes I found around the house that might fit you and if you happen to be hungry, I brought breakfast for you as well' he spoke with a warm voice full of kindness.

She responded with a smile, after which Adam asked her if she could remember how she ended up in the forest. The girl explained that she was experiencing amnesia and couldn't remember anything since she had woken up.

'Well, until you get back your memory you can stay as much as you want. It gets kind of lonely up in the mountains, so it's nice to have some company. For the time being, would you mind if I call you Ghost? I do need to call you by a name and you do give off an unworldly feeling, almost as if you were supernatural.'

She was a bit surprised, but seemed fond of her new nickname.

'If you don't mind, I need to finish some work in my office, so I would like to quickly finish it off and then get back to you. It might take me until lunch, but if you want to, you're free to wander around the house, the only exception being my office where I'll be. It has some personal stuff I wouldn't really want to share."

Ghost nodded in agreement and decided to explore the building covered in white. As she was walking down a corridor with all kinds of drawing depicting different alien worlds, the smell of petroleum hit her, but it was quite weak, almost unnoticeable. The corridor led to the living room which had a giant view of the lake and the majestic waterfall. It wasn't too furnished, only having a couch and a coffee table with a laptop on it-- it seemed like a waste of opportunity when looking at all the free space. She went outside to the lake's shore and played around with a few crows that had a nest near the lake. She did this for a couple of hours, until Adam came back, after which the two of them headed to the kitchen to eat lunch. While they were eating, Ghost asked him why does he live alone, isolated in the woods.

'Well, it's a long story, but I can tell it to you if you want me to... I was born in twenty--thirteen, not long after my dad had left my mother with whom I grew up and died when I was six. Luckily, I had a grandfather who took me in. He was a researcher of gene creation and manipulation, the best one in the world. Shortly after, I became his apprentice. In the timespan of five years I ended up learning everything he knew, but I still had to attend high school and so I did. It was quite boring for me, however, it got quite interesting after a year, when my class received a transfer student named April. She was treated by some as an outcast because of her sickness-- she was albino. However, I wasn't like the others; I started talking to her and a few months later we started dating and we were quite joyful together. Now that I think about it, you look quite similar to her', Ghost was blushing in embarrassment. 'Unfortunately, the two of us have ended up in a metro accident where I fell in a short coma and she had... gone away. When I woke up I also got the news that my grandfather has died of old age and has left me this house and quite some money with it. After moving here I discovered that I had a talent at writing, so I became a short-story writer for a magazine. That's about it.'

The rest of their chat went by uneventfully, consisting of Ghost asking him about the stories he had written. After lunch, Adam told her that he had to go to the neighboring city to buy ingredients and he invited her as well, so maybe she could regain her memories there, but she refused, because she wished to check out more parts of the house.

When she was finally alone ghost decided to enter the "forbidden office" to find out what secrets Adam was keeping, but to her demise the only thing she has discovered was the dark reality of the truth about herself.

At dawn Adam came back to find his house rampaged through and with the girl nowhere to be found. He rushed upstairs to his room and upon entering it he realized what happened. Meanwhile, Ghost was sitting beside the lake, curled up and weeping, being unable to comprehend what she had experienced. Adam was walking towards her, but was stopped in his track by Ghost's loud screams:

'Why didn't you just tell me everything from the beginning?! Why did you have to keep lying? ', she shouted with a fountain of tears still coming down her tender face, 'You kept being nice to me, manipulating me into trusting, so you could achieve what? Tell me!'

'Please, try to calm down and let's talk about this back in the house before anything bad happens' he responded with a low tone, trying to cool her off, but without any success.

'No, I won't trust you again!' a sudden and intense pain struck her with cracks appearing on her neck, which were slowly spreading throughout her body. It was hurting so much she couldn't even keep her balance, but fortunately Adam was able to catch her just in time.

'I told you that you should calm down, this body of yours cannot house emotions of such intensity' he caressed her face carefully, his expression turning into a sorrowful one, 'I'm sorry, but you won't be able to withstand this existence for much more. You saw the other ones as well; they had the same ending that you're going to experience. That's just how the cycle goes when it comes to defects...'

'....Wh-what am I to you? ', she was coughing terribly.

'My newest song, which will be quite sorrowful, but it will have a nice melancholy feel to it, just the way I like it' Adam answered with waterworks sparking in red sunshine and wearing a fake smile.

Hearing this, Ghost closed her eyes and smiled happily, after which her limbs started to turn into dust and fall off, until her full being was carried away by the wind. A small glass cube was left behind in Adam's hands, featuring a miniature crow in it and peculiar inscriptions on the bottom.

He went back to his room, holding the strange artifact and ignoring all the mess in the building. In his office there was a desk with multiple drawers and a scanner-like device on it. Behind the desk there was a wide shelf with about twenty or so similar glass cubes, all storing different objects in them. Adam sat down and put Ghost's cube on the scanner, which revealed a holographic projector showcasing a video of her memories. There was also a melancholy song playing in the background, its lyrics being sung by a slightly robotic version of Ghost's voice.

After listening to the entire song, he held up the cube to inspect it from a closer view, but he seemed quite unsatisfied with what he had created:

'She had turned into just another tune of agony...'