Ephemeral

I could suffer a thousand deaths for the very ideas that I hold in my mind.

For as long as I am given the chance to believe, I live.... For in my mind, I am strong, I am indestructible, I am supreme. I am reassured that in my mind, with myself...

I am safe

Andrei shifts to the keys of Adagio E Cantabile. The low notes that seem to continually resonate in his very soul was consuming-- it had reflected that very night.

His gentle brown eyes move at the pace swifter than his hands that quickly read the notes on the score sheet before him. His music was, though fleeting, had a certain beauty. A beauty that even in its imperfection showed his passions, his character, his humanity-- his entirety.

But for the past several nights, nearing his day of birth, a recurring faltered memory of his mother's voice was all he could think of. "...Ronobe, the answers you seek lay within the darkness in you."

Oh mother...

he thought ...if you only knew how hard it had been for me...

Andrei continues to play the piano amidst this throbbing pain in his head. The notes before him had blurred... he suddenly drops headfirst on the elegant instrument and coughs. The first and only instance where the instrument's solid and beautiful structure would ever be tainted with a violent spatter of crimson.

...yes... this would never cease to plague me.

Andrei's mind had thought as his hand tries to reach for the golden cross on his neck. The clock somewhere chimed twelve in the morning. Andrei let out a long pained scream and thus falls on the floor, recoiling and shuddering. Clawing the hard marble floor, he screams. Although no matter how much he did, the surround was eerily quiet-- as though the walls and the night were absorbing the slightest sound. Heady and pained, he lay still on the cold floor....

Although something out of the ordinary lay before his eyes. Vision blurred, he could only make out a long black object stained in dark red before he passed out.

Could it be? The very thing he dreaded as a child has come to collect him.