The Piano Recital

The air smelled of decay and rotting saliva. Many of the corpses could not keep their mouths shut and drooled pools of spit beneath their chairs. She walked up the rows and sat at the bench. Yellow worms wiggled between her toes and her useless joints sung a lifeless arm to the keys. It was a horrible sound. The sound that kills men's souls in the pit of their stomach, the sound that chokes a baby's gurgle, the sound that draws blood from wounds. She finished the last notes; her fingers slipping and grasping at the keys like a man's last breath. Her purple marked hand left her wrist and let dark blood seep into the keys and down to the floor, making the pedals slippery with blood's copper shine. The corpses didn't clap. They never did. Drool dripped, blood flowed, and the living wept.