Every day I wake up, and everything is the same.

I dress myself up and move to the piano in the corner of my room. The wind howls furiously by my window, and the women by my door. They used to frighten me at first. The loud banging of fists on wood and the spray of spittle through the keyhole; but it’s all the same now. All I have to do is play my song, and they leave me alone for a little while.

They ask for a child who is no longer present in this world. You see, this piano is not mine. Nor the bed I sleep in, the clothes I wear. The women don’t dare step in, but they do not stop calling out for her. “Do not be disobedient, come out at once!”

But they do not call out my name. 

It is said that a family of four once moved to this lonely mansion by the sea to accommodate the sick mother. The children had private tutors, and the father would lock himself up in his office for weeks at a time. The eldest daughter wanted a companion to play with, and so would often be found racing the waves by the beach, with thunder and lightning keeping score for them.

Her sister wanted to try doing the same. All she got for her efforts was a bloated corpse thrown around like a ragdoll by the sea, three days after she had been reported missing. But the eldest insisted that her sibling was just playing a prank on all of them and that she could find her still playing in the water on most moonlit nights. 

Fluttering wings make me jump; now I can’t think of anything but the return of pigeons by my windowsill. And the knocking on my door.

Droplets of water no longer dot the floorboards. The wind echoes their screams, but they no longer make hair stand on my nape. Once I caught a glimpse of a middle aged matron; she wore nothing on her lower half as she walked around in wild abandon. I don’t think she ever noticed the face watching her. She caught sight of something beyond my purview and her face twisted into an ugly snarl before she took off. I didn’t see her for quite a few days after that.

Out of my window, I can see a cliff that overlooks the black sea. Waves lashing against rocks, sweeping the shore with terribly white foam; but no courage to lash out fully. It was on one such violent day that I had been practicing my song, when there was another knock at the door. This time, it was another woman. Fully clothed, she was elderly and beatific by nature. Perhaps her eyes caught my movements, for she started coaxing that little girl to let her in. My hand was halfway to the latch before I caught myself proper. When it became evident that she wouldn’t come out, that old woman visibly wilted. Muttering something under her breath, she stomped off with loud sniffs and guttural sobs.

They dress the same, those two women. The first one is always in a green kurti with unkempt hair resembling a black bush. The second one in that prim and proper white veshti. They scream to the heavens for that little girl. Sometimes they scream at each other. Sometimes they scream at nothing.

They do not notice how their hands get translucent these days. Some days, they do not seem to reflect back in the mirrors behind them. They do not acknowledge the matron’s half nakedness as they trotter past each other, or the violent mumbles of the crone as she paces back and forth in wait for her granddaughter.

They are content only when I play the same four notes over and over again. When they ask for her at the door, and I play without a word. When they disappear, only to reappear after a moment with the same request. And when I grace them with the same answer: one two three four, one two three four.