She stood at the bottom step, her face tainted red from the stain-glass like the countenance of some fiend. A ragged shawl hugged her narrow frame with the tightness of a shroud. In her arms she gripped a gleaming accordion, her fingers mechanically pressing the keys even as she paused to listen to the chorus wafting through the open doors. Even when she was asleep her nails would trace the ridges of her only earthly possession, but now, at the sound of the voices, she stopped, pushed back her instrument, and listened. The mist dripped around her, not yet tangible rain, but damp enough to make anything solid seem comforting.
This was the only door in the whole town that had never closed in her face, but she could not climb those steps in fear that it might indeed, at last, close. For what if it did? No, better the cruel wind, coupled with some illusion of hope. Why did she find it so difficult on such a night, like any other? What were a few more decades out here—down here—after so many lost years?
The wind tossed her hair like strands of stinging snakeskin over her eyes. But she could still see how the stain glass windows pulsed with color, and where the cross-topped domes disappeared into the black oblivion of night. From within she heard the organ, and the notes bled energy into her numbed fingers. She shrugged out of the accordion’s strap and fumbled once again for the keys. She began playing; walking and playing, trying to stay warm and wondering when the cold spell would break.
No one spoke to her, the beggar woman pacing between the brink of light and dark, her face contorted with emotion, her fingers punching the keys of an eerily screeching accordion. Emitting an eerie screeching melody. The occasional car rumbled by. Nobody cared to stop and inquire about this human prowling the streets. She continued on her way, punishing her feet with the walk and her nostrils with the aromas drifting out from behind the restaurant doors across the street, doors that had closed against the darkness, the wind, and the poor.
She watched other people walk around her, trying not to brush against her, trying not to see another part of life, another person’s existence. She played faster and faster. The music followed them, and slipped into their ears, and chilled their souls, and made them walk just a little more softly.
One day, with the right song, she would get to them.
"Angreek87"
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