The Notes

Short Story (last version)

The notes by Miriam Winkler

I pressed down my fingers on the tiles of the piano. A beautiful sound came out.

My mother was a pianist, and she never stopped playing the piano before she died. She brought the piano 45 years ago, from a secondhand store. It was unknown how old it was, and who the previous owner was. So it wasn't strange that the sound that came from it was a little bit deeper than normal. I have been playing on it since she passed away in 2014.

I started to play one note slowly, then two notes. It sounded sorrowful and I got a blurred image in my head. Three notes and I could feel the heavy air from back then... I started to play a little bit faster as the memory slowly came back to me.

I remembered when I took the last footsteps to the second floor. I opened the door that was in front of me, and I saw the shape of a human in the middle of the air.

The number of notes I played increased quickly, as I moved my wrists and fingers to a higher speed.

The room was dark, so I couldn't see well. The room was also cold, and I got a strange feeling from it. As I turned on the light, I saw my dad hanging in a thick rope that was tied like a hangman's noose. I ran up to him and tried to take him down. My legs started to tremble and I screamed. He felt unnaturally cold and didn't move at all. I tried to lift him away from the rope, but it didn't work. It felt like my stomach was bleeding and I ran downstairs to call an ambulance. After I said the address with a shaky voice, I started to freak out and shouted that I couldn't get him down. When the call was over, I ran into the kitchen. I took a chair, a knife, and I ran upstairs so fast that I almost fell down from the stairs.

My dad was still hanging unconsciously in the air, and his body started to dangle back and forth when I tried to cut the rope. I tried to shout "wake up, wake up dad", but my throat was so dry that not a single sound came out from my mouth. After a while, my hands started to bleed, my black hair was hanging down to my eyes, and my eyes were full of tears. I couldn't see clearly. My legs trembled so much that I dropped to the floor. I got up as fast as possible. Instead of cutting the rope, I stepped up on the chair, and I tried to lift his body as much as possible in hopes that the rope didn't strangle him as hard. I saw how the blood transferred from my hands to my father's white shirt.

I played so fast that it sounded like the notes were fighting against each other.

Two men in ambulance uniforms came running in. They got my dad off the rope and took him downstairs. I dropped to the ground and it felt like I was paralyzed. I couldn't move, neither could I think.

The tears fell down from my eyes, down to the tiles, and dripped to the chair I was sitting on. I was playing the notes so fast that it sounded like the piano had gone berserk, just like my mind.

At the hospital, a doctor fixed my hands and told me that I've done a good job when I held my father up. That was the reason why he survived, even though he was in a coma.

I continued to play on the piano, a little calmer at the same time my hands were shaking.

Two weeks passed. During that time, I stayed at the hospital in hopes that my father would wake up. After three more days, he opened his eyes. I held his hand, it felt warm, and I started to cry. A doctor came in to check on him. He wanted me to walk away while he would talk to my father.

I was at the end of the song, so I played the last notes slowly. I looked to the left where my father was sitting in his wheelchair, looking at the landscapes through the window. "You've become better at playing the piano. It sounded beautiful" he said.