Play Me For Her

It was a small town of no importance, trapped between a mountain and a valley in a country I’m sure that you have never heard of. It was a town so small that nobody shared a birthday, and any potential visitor usually got lost on the way and had to turn back. In this town, there was one nurse, and her house became the only hospital. This house had a guest room, and that guest room had a bed on which every child in the town was delivered. So it was on this bed that Meredith Reusche gave birth to Peter, a beautiful baby boy who 26 years, 117 days, 4 hours, and 12 minutes from that moment would become the last person in that town.

26 years, 116 days later. The night before. His wife’s birthday, if only he had remembered. She sat at home alone the whole day while he worked in the mines for rubies, the town’s only export. Hours passed by as she sat alone and pregnant with their first child. A girl. When he came home at the end of the day, he fell onto the couch without even taking off his shoes. He smelled like smoke and whiskey, which explained why he was so late getting home. The thought of him out drinking while she cried alone in their bedroom was too much.

“That’s it!” She screamed. “I can’t handle this anymore!”

“What is it, honey?” Peter said, confused. This was his routine every Friday, and she had never gotten mad before. In fact, she usually laughed at his habits. He had no idea what was wrong today.

“Don’t.” She said, tears filling her eyes again. “Don’t try it with me. You know well enough yourself what it is. I want our baby to have a caring father, Pete. Not some drunk hanging around the house. I just can’t take this anymore!”

“Come on, baby, don’t be like that. Come to bed with me, you’ll calm down in the morning.”

“I’m going to bed, Pete. But I’m not going with you. Don’t talk to me until tomorrow.” And with that, Peter was banned to the basement to sleep.

The house had been built during the First World War with a bomb shelter in the basement. It was meant to provide protection in case of a bombing, but over time, the bomb threat decreased, and it was turned into a storage room with a hatch door and ladder. As Peter flipped on the flickering lightbulb, he noticed things from his past that he had nearly forgotten. On the floor sat an old, broken camera that he had used to take his own wedding photos. Against the wall was a small piano with a few missing keys that he had learned to play as a boy. He had since pushed that knowledge to the back of his mind, deeming it useless in any profession. In the corner of the room was a four-poster bed with scratched wooden posters and a moth-eaten mattress. This was where he would sleep for the night. He crawled into bed with a quilt his mother made for him when he was five, shivering in the drafty shelter. Sleep evaded him for a while, but soon he was out cold.

It was only a few hours later that the bombs dropped. Peter woke up sharply to the sound of explosions. He thought that they might have been fireworks, shot off in the distance by the few teenage hooligans that lived in the town. He angrily climbed the ladder to open the hatch, but it was stuck.

“Jammed.” he spat angrily. He needed to get out eventually. There was only enough air in the room to last him 24 hours, and he had no intention of dying here. He heard the booming grow louder. It was louder now than fireworks ever got. And how would the kids get fireworks anyway? The town had banned pyrotechnics years ago, and there was no way that any of the kids had gotten to the nearest town, which was a day’s journey away. The sound of the bombs grew louder and closer. He felt the rumbling of the explosions shake him out of his wits. He heard his own screaming mix with another, coming from his wife. He desperately tried to get out, to find his wife and take her to safety, but the hatch pushed back, keeping him safe in his dark prison while the world around him burned. 

In less than five minutes, the town became utterly silent. The last bomb had fallen, leaving nothing but rubble and Peter, his ears ringing and his eyes wet with tears for his beloved. He had cried more than ever before, and he could find no tears left to cry. 19 hours until the air ran out. He had to save his breath for as long as he could. He had to find a way out.

As he scanned the room for some kind of secret passageway or tunnel, his eyes were drawn to the sad piano on the opposite wall. His mind flashed through pictures of memory, and he felt a song pressing against his heart. He pushed it away; he couldn’t think of that song. Not now. It wasn’t long before he determined his search to be useless. There was no way out. 18 hours from now, he would be dead with everyone else.

He sat on his bed in despair and thought about what he had said to his wife the last time he saw her. What had he done wrong? What was she so mad about? The last thing she had told him was, “Don’t talk to me until tomorrow.” He hadn’t. He wished he had, but the simple fact was that he hadn’t. And now he could never talk to her again. He watched the sad piano on the wall, the memories it ensued mocking him. A simple life, full of laughter and music. He wanted that. He needed that, and he could never have it. He stumbled to the mocking piano, crashing his fist on the keys. The piano clashed back. The discordant jumble of notes strained his ears, and he winced at the sound. The piano stared at his pitiful human nature as if to say, “Play me well.”

“No,” he said quietly, then he started the shout. “No!”

“Pete.” He heard the piano in his mother’s voice. “Play me well. Play me for her.” 

He reluctantly laid his fingers gently on the keys and pressed lightly. A C-Chord. His memories, or what was left of them, came back. He sat on a bench with a broken leg, which he steadied with an old high school textbook. He plucked simple notes and chords, avoiding the broken keys. He felt the music sway him into a sort of trance, and he kept playing.

He played songs that he learned in his childhood. Three Blind Mice, Mary Had A Little Lamb, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star all came back. They had seemed so hard to master when he was a boy, but now it seemed the notes moved under his fingers to be played well. He played every song that he had ever heard. Ballets, pop music, jigs, and ballads. Occasionally he would listen to another bomb go off in the distance. He wondered if that bomb had killed another survivor, who also thought he was alone. He wondered if the bomb was dropped by the same person who had killed his wife just hours before. He cried while playing love songs, and he laughed while playing the musical theatre tunes that he had grown up on. 

When he ran out of songs to play, he began to write his own. They weren’t pretty. Ragged tunes that stabbed and carved out some sort of foundation. The songs had no rhyme or reason, but that is what made them his. He played for no one but himself. No one but himself.

“Pete.” He heard his mother’s voice again. “You are not playing me well.”

“I am playing what I know.” He replied. “I am playing who I am.”

“If that were so, you would be playing well.”

“No! I am not well. I am dying, and you are only telling me to play better. I am playing for me, and I am playing what I want to hear.”

“Play me for her, Pete.” The song that he avoided came back into his mind. He tried to claw it out, but he only felt it grow stronger, pulsing through his entire body. “Play me for her.”

He sighed. His fingers touched the keys. Every fiber in his brain tried to reject the song, but it came anyway. A simple tune, anchored by a low and steady system of chords and phrases. This was a song that he wrote, but it wasn’t ragged, and it wasn’t new. He had written for his wife, and he sang it on their wedding day. The notes flew in harmony with his memory of her, and although he hadn’t sung since his wedding day, he sang one final time. For her.

“You are my everything,

And know this is true,

No matter what happens, dear,

I’ll always love you.

You’ll always be everything,

My strength and my heart,

I’ll love you forever, dear,

Till death do us…”

The words caught in his throat. He slammed the lid of the piano and went to the forsaken bed in the corner. He had wasted his precious last hours on some stupid piano, and now all he had was a couple of minutes and a song playing through his head like a broken record. She was angry at him. He deserved it, he was sure of it, even if he didn’t know why. The piano mocked him. Its short figure stood only as a reminder of everything he had lost. He lashed out, killing the piano. He struggled for breath as he crashed against the keys, splintering the wooden frame. The sad piano screamed with agony as every note snapped out of place and left a pile of rubble nearly identical to the one that crushed his wife. The music had ended, the tune had been forgotten, and here he was, stuck with a pile of timber instead of his beloved wife. Suddenly, he remembered. It was her birthday. How could he forget? 

“Happy Birthday, sweetie.” He said, laughing somberly. “I’ll see you soon.” He sang the final verse of his song.

“You’ll be my everything,

My strength and my heart,

I’ll love you forever, dear...” He took a deep breath, breathing the last of the thin air in the shelter that had saved him.

“I’ll love you forever, dear,

And never to part.”