Like jagged teeth, the keys snarl up at me with a satisfied grin. When did you become my enemy, huh? We used to be so close. My fingers hover silently above those teeth, but I cannot will them to go any further for fear of being bitten. These damn fingers. I can hear the song, and I can recall the movements in my head, but I can’t—I can’t. I won’t. I start rubbing my knuckles again. There’s never been anything I wanted more than to tell you a story, beast. Make your jagged mouth sing with the things I am feeling. And now the story has been ripped from my throat. The notes so vivid in my head are fleeting and dead now that I cannot make you say them. I’m empty. I can’t feel anything, but for some reason I can feel everything still stuck inside of my heart and it won’t come out. Everyday there’s more and more of it. It’s rotting inside of me, poisoning my insides, my mind. I don’t know how to tell it anymore. Don’t know how to tell what my heart wants to say. And it kills me. It kills me slowly to have this beauty and this ugly inside me that won’t ever be thrust into the universe in a burst of passion and emotion. I don’t reckon I have passion anymore. Just poison. Poison from the bite of the beast that was once loyal to me. Does anyone know what that’s like? To die a slow and painful death? But it doesn’t even matter now. I can’t do anything about it. Close the lid, fingers. I can will you to do that much, can’t I? Put the beast in its cage and never let it out again.