Italian piano play

Soft sounds of piano play pierced through the windows and soothed her ears. A beautiful melody of consonant notes, sounding so lightly but heavy at the same time. The rhythm danced in the cold air, carrying the sound all round the small park she was sitting in. Her legs ached for move; she wanted to swirl around with those notes.

She did not make a move, not at all. If anything, it could only bring her foolish happiness for mere seconds. For some minutes, as in agreement, the music silenced.

She looked around, not really seeing anything in the darkness. Curled on the stone bench, she looked like a statue. The chilly, shivering wind did not bother her anymore. She watched the stars come up the sky, lightning one another as if they were passing a precisely hidden ray of fire, each one catching on flame itself as it touches the flame. That is what she missed a lot in the city; the perfect unison of pure nature.

Then, again, the pianist started to play again. She rosed from the bench in a split of second and rather walked around the stone fountain in the middle of circle made of benches. There were some trees around the park; but all of them without leaves. They looked as abandoned as she felt.

She took the nearest way down the village; the streets were narrow and old, but all cars and buses somehow made it through them. That never failed to surprise her, but now did not matter. Because it was a late evening, there were just few people passing by. The houses were quite old, made of thick, grey bricks, all of them having the same coloured roof. The village itself was poorly lightened. On the next possible turn she took the right one, and found herself on a small square with a great church just on the opposite site from her. She took in the big, somehow scarry looking cross that hung on the front wall and shivered. It felt like she could not get any closer nor look away. No. That is bad. She cannot believe, never could have and never will. If fate was the only thing she had been given, then it surely must have been fate of some other kind.

She turned around just to see some doors behind her opening and then closing away. Some man walked out and then away, the wind carrying his drunken scent to her nostrils. It must be a bar, she thought, and decided to go in.

Inside the bar looked as it did from outside; abandoned and unused. Despite it, there were about four tables and four men, who looked up and stared at her as she made her way farther to the room. She went to bartender and ordered a beer. He seemed like he understood what she said. The other men started to talk to her, but she did not understand a word in italian and so she ignored them. Soon, they turned their focus on their drinks again.

The bartender brought her a big glass of cold beer. She sipped it, faster than she should, but she liked the taste of it, so bitter and drizzling as it should be. She finished it, ordered one more and after drinking it away she paid and went back to streets.

Small snow flakes were falling from the sky above and the temperatures went down. She clutched her jacket to herself, trying to make her more warm. The beer was somewhere in the middle into its way to her head; she wasn´t feeling sober neither drunk.

The cold wind was starting to be pretty annoying, but as long as she almost stopped feeling anything, it was quite okay with her. Maybe her lips were turning a bit blue, she did not really care. She kept moving forward, straight to a small bridge over almost frozen river that run down the high mountains.

Near the bridge stood a group of men, all of who looked quite drunk. When they registered her walking towards them, some of them started shouting something in italian. She did not know whether to be disappointed or pleased that she has never learned that language. She smiled, after all, because some of the italian guys were handsome, but she was not about to stop and have a talk with them. She had him, him with big letter H, had lost him. Is not it funny, how one keeps finding and then loosing things in life? You find a friend, but then comes the time when you loose him. You find a love, but surely there is an end. She knew that, realized that. But also she knew that people just keep their faith that they will never ever loose those feelings, those people. Everything what has a start has an end.

She heard lot of stories when she was just a child. About love, friendship, hope, victory. All those stories that parents tell their children when they are little, because somebody has written them for whatever reason. What that reason was, she was not sure, but it might have been a hope that people will change in some ways, be more aware of what they can have and have. Has it helped so far?

She stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked down, into the waters. She caught her reflection there, just a woman staring. It almost looked like the shadow wanted to move. Or maybe it was her. It is all in my head, she told herself.

The italian men decided to have a fight. Or maybe that was just a discussion, she was not sure, for they are known for being hot tempered. They looked as animals, predators which have to fight fot their own area, their pack and their own rules. She then reached the other side of river bank and went to the woods.

She was broken and she was well aware of that fact. But, let`s be honest, aren`t most of people broken in their very own way? She didn`t want to make a fuss about her feelings, so she kept her mouth shut, pretended a lot. Sometimes that helped and sometimes she was screaming silently, inside her head, without no actual reason. Or is unhappiness a reason?

She loathed for his touch, his smile, his voice, his eyes that were smiling silently. They made mistakes, but who doesn`t?

The pines and birches were approaching her with their needle like fingers, touching her, scratching her. She did not mind at all.

When everything went wrong for her, she needed to run. Run away, far away, to the unknown, far beyond her knowledge of world, somewhere she could not be find. There, where her thoughts were really hers, nobody could make her do something she doesn`t like. Without goodbyes, without tears, with no attention at all. It was voluntarily, at least something that she could have decided to do. All of her life she was comanded, had to do everything she was said to. This was about her, about her very own, her needs.

Her life was pretty much fine, happily passing by, until the age of sixteen. Then everything changed. Maybe it was a fair change for those peaceful years before, when nothing happened. That day she could remember well enough, more than any other events that she went through. It was sunny, but freezing outside, with no clouds in the view. It was first weekend in March and she was having a lazy afternoon, spending it by reading a book. Everything was still, quiet, her dog wagging his tail as he wanted her to patt him. While she did so- and boy, was the dog happy about that- she heard a muffled thud in the kitchen. Somebody screamed and then she run there.

The image she saw was hunting her for years, it felt like it had been written in her brain, photographed maybe. She could tell where the blood was sprawled on the floor, how her father laid on the floor with his eyes opened, having almost normal look in them like he was still alive, a bullet that went through his head and left there just a small hole. He had a knife in his hand, with pieces of onion underneath his body. That day, their lunch was not finished.

She remember the pieces of glass that was spread across the floor, glass from window through which came the bullet. She could see her mother and the expression on her face, her perfect still body as if she had died, too. For the first few minutes, it did not give her some sense. Neither it had when she called the police or when they came, tall and important looking. Her brain was not able to think, to make sense of what had happened. It felt as if her thinking had stopped and did not want to move forward. She felt like a machine, handing her mother loads of handkerchiefs, answering the policemen`s questions, looking at the death corp which used to be her father.

The days that followed were clouded, only pieces of puzzle that would not pass together. Her mother was sad at first, drunk sometimes, crying in her pillow every night. She could not cry. Then her mother took her on a holiday somewhere near the sea, thinking it would help. It did not. Maybe her mother felt a little better, strong enough to survive, to live again. But she did not. In fact, she did not feel anything except emptiness.

The police tried to find the shooter who killed her father, but were not very successful.

At her father`s funeral, there were lots of people who claimed to be her family, although she had never met them. They cried, were sad and said loads of crappy things to her. They described her father as if he was a God, not really knowing him. Most of them hugged her, acted like she was a little child.

Every night after her father`s death she never felt safe in their house. She needed to be sure nothing will happen again, so she woke up every hour and went down the stairs, checking if their doors were locked and windows shut.

She did not want to listen to her teachers anymore, or see kids from her school pointing at her and whispering loudly enough for her to hear them. Even after the sensation around her father`s death quieted, it felt as if there still were many whispering mouths and staring eyes. She started to skip her classes. Instead, she went riding around highway, sat in various cafes or motorests, smoked cigarettes that did not taste good.

At the age of seventeen she was kicked out of high school and her mother decided that was time to move somewhere else. So they went from a little city in Colorado to a big city in the south of Oregon. They left everything behind, hoping for a new start in their lifes.