FICTION
ATONAL (EXCERPT)
Lily stared at the ceiling, her eye measuring the grooves of the texture above. She had been awake for no more than a half an hour. She knew she needed to get out of bed, but she couldn’t seem to will herself to leave behind the warmth and coziness under her blanket. She quickly glanced at her phone.
9:47am.
With a groan, she pulled back the covers and slid her feet off the bed onto the cold hardwood floor. She took one more deep breath before she made her way into the kitchen of her apartment to get some much needed coffee. As she waited for the coffee to finish brewing, she sat down at the upright piano she had in her living room.
There were instruments scattered all throughout her apartment, but she made sure each day to spend time with the piano, even if it was just the few minutes she waited for her coffee in the mornings. Her fingers rested gently atop the keys as she pondered which notes to play this morning. She settled on a full, etherial chord that filled the spaces of her apartment with a chilling, yet soothing sound. She thumbed the higher octave of the root note on the beat of a slow tempo. She shifted to a complementary chord that possessed a bit more tension, doubling up the thumbing of the root note of the new chord. After letting the tension hang a few moments, she returned to the notes in which she began. Lily closed her eyes and continued to repeat the cycle of this progression. Her mind began to drift away with each passing note.
Music had always been a means of escape for Lily. She grew up bouncing between various foster homes, never truly having any sense of consistency. A rare constant she had to cling to was music.
One of the few upsides that came to her as a foster kid was getting to experience a wide, diverse range of music styles. Each family she stayed with had their own preferences and tastes. Although they didn’t always resonate with her, she enjoyed the journey of the exploration.
When she was twelve she stayed with a family that owned a grand piano. Now at twenty six she strained to keep her childhood as a distant memory in her mind, however that piano was as vivid as ever. It was the first time she had the chance to create music on her own. For the few months she was able to stay with that family, she spent as much time as possible sitting at that piano. From then on her love of music continued to evolve from instrument to instrument and genre to genre.
She was by no means a master musician and she rarely found herself on a stage performing. For Lily, playing was not about being the most talented or performing for others. She did not play to be seen or heard. She played to escape.
As she continued to sway between the same two chords, the aroma of freshly brewed coffee drifted into her nostrils, easing her out of her trance-like state. She resolved her progression on the second chord, leaving an air of wanting more as she rose from the piano to retrieve her cup of coffee.