#3 Flash Fiction B&W Challenge - The Right Key

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#3 Flash Fiction B&W Challenge

Some say music heals. Not for Louise. While she was a child, music was a torment. Her mother, a piano teacher, set her mind on making of her daughter a renowned pianist.

The days would pass, sheepishly, between school in the morning and piano lessons in the afternoon. Louise had no friends, simply because she had no time to have friends. Her mother didn’t seem to worry about that. “A pianist doesn’t need friends,” she would hiss at her daughter.

One day, years later, Louise decided not to go home immediately after school. It was her senior year and she dreaded the day when she had to accept a destiny long chosen for her. She wandered all the way to the lake and sat on the ground, her feet in the water. 

As she looked to her right, she saw a piano in the middle of the field. She wondered what a piano was doing there. Her mother scolded her each time she placed something on the piano “You’ll ruin it,” she would snarl. Yet, this piano was not only out in the open, subjected to bad weather and changing temperatures, but it also had a pot with flowers on top of it.

It probably doesn’t work at all, thought Louise. She walked up to it and sat down. She didn’t really want to play. That’s why she decided to take this detour in the first place. However, something drew her to the black and white keys, something she could not explain.

Cautiously, she touched a key. The sound it made was perfect. Then she touched another key. Again, it was perfect. Finally, she played whatever came to her head; she just played and played for hours.

It was almost dark when she realized that she should head back home. Her mother was furious when she arrived. Louise had missed her piano lesson.

Although she tried to explain that it hadn’t been wasted time, because she did play during those hours she was away, her mother wouldn’t hear a word of it. “Sit yourself down at the piano right now, young lady, and you shall practice your scales for three hours.”

That night, Louise packed a bag and left. Her mother would never see her again, not even after Louise became a renowned jazz musician.

Curiously enough, the other piano is still sitting by the lake, playing crisp, fine tuned notes, despite the years, despite the weather and definitely despite the flowerpot on top of it.