Jacob

 "Jacob Winslow, Piano Prodigy!" That's what the paper read, an old black and white picture of himself staring back at him, his child form holding a large trophy and immense check- but his eyes were empty and his nails were short. Jacob grew up in a small town called Appleton, a population too big for a child to know everyone, but small enough for everyone to know him. He had grown up on an apple farm with his parents, contributing to the Appleton company that gave his town it's namesake. He was born to pick apples, and only apples- nothing more and nothing less. His hands rubbed raw from their hard waxy skins, his back and legs trembling from climbing up the ladder, down the ladder, up the ladder, down the ladder- over and over and over again. But as Jacob put on his silly show for the birds, bobbing up and down as he picked clean each tree and tossed apples into the basket below, he began to head his audience applaud him. They'd whistle and sing their praises to him, his spectacle offering some other form of entertainment other than watching for worms wriggling in the dirt. He loved their tunes, their sweet and soft tunes. He'd hum them throughout the day, while he was picking apples, carrying apples, skinning apples, and even at night he began to dream of the birds and no more the apples. Therefore it was of no surprise to him when he could perfectly replicate their tunes, not just in voice but in all forms of music. He would have perfect pitches with the flute, perfect rhythm with the drums, and perfect harmonies on the piano. This was quite mundane to him, and possibly to everyone else too, if it wasn't for the fact that he was only the mere age of five and hadn't touched an instrument his whole life. He was, by all intents and purposes, a prodigy. He played in the talent shows, at the town festivals, and he once put on a performance for the head of the company himself, Mr. Hapsfield. He'd had no wife in his life, focusing on business instead, and thus many thought it to be his old heart longing for a child when he began to take interest in Jacob. He sponsored his lessons, insisting that the very best should learn from the best, and cut his parent's quota requirements so he could go to lessons instead of the field. Jacob was ecstatic at first, thankful for his hands to rest, and that's exactly what he got for a while. Mr. Hapsfield focused on the boy's singing, his knowledge of the scales, and meter, and music theory. Jacob studies Beethoven, Johann, Giuseppe, Chopin, and the other classics. Jacob was a natural, constantly impressing his mentor without fail. Over and over again. Yet, he also hated it. Not because the lessons bored him, but because he was always distracted. There was a- sound, coming from somewhere within the room, a soft scratching sound almost. It would gnaw at him, at his child-like mind, and he slowly grew more and more interested in it than he was his lessons. Mr. Hapsfield must've believed it was due to his disinterest in learning about music rather than playing it, since he soon started Jacob on the actual art of playing. Jacob longed to play exotic and elaborate instruments such at the Harp, Violin, or the Cello- clearly preferring traditionally stringed instruments. But Mr. Hapsfield had other ideas. He was a pianist in his old days, and saw it as the pinnacle of musical perfection. He'd play records of compositions featuring exclusively the piano over, and over, and over again. He'd sit Jacob down, have him listen to a song a few times, and then play it. Every mistake he made made Mr. Hapsfield mad, almost the point of pure unadulterated rage. Screaming, throwing vases, smashing holes into paintings. Those were bad sessions. After a bad session Jacob was expected to stay on the property for a few nights until he got it perfect, and every night that happened he'd hear the scratches more and more, right behind his head frame, or sometimes above his head, maybe even beneath his bed? It was hard to tell and always moved. Jacob was 7 by now, having spent two years under Mr. Hapsfield's mentorship. The apple farming business had begun to grow sour, with a lot of the apples beginning to rot for seemingly no reason. Mr. Hapsfield suspected foul play, perhaps a rival business or an insider. Everyone was placed under watch. Meanwhile, back at Jacob's home, his mother was becoming increasingly more and more sick. No one knew what was wrong with her, she just grew so weak and fatigued and rarely saw Jacob anymore. She begged Mr. Hapsfield to let Jacob take a break, let him stay home with her for just a while, a few days at most. But he refused, saying it was Jacob's decision. What he didn't tell her he instead told to Jacob, telling him, "If you leave to see your mother, if you miss a single lesson then these end here and now." "I don't care," Jacob begged, "I just want to see my mother. She needs me!" Mr. Hapsfield maintained, "If you stay then you'll get better, become the best!" "I don't want that!" "But you could be rich!" Mr. Hapsfield implored, "You could win so much money, help pay for your mother's treatments!" "I-" Jacob thought, I guess so... And so Jacob remained. He stayed and practiced, winning competitions with prize money, Mr. Hapsfield diving a potion to go to Jacob's family and the rest to Sponsor his lessons. This continued until Jacob was nine, when his father died. "It was a freak accident," they said, "A car got in a wreck with his and sped off before calling an ambulance and before anyone could find the culprit." Jacob was broken. He had lost half of the reason why he had endured for so long, why he suffered the rigorous and torturous teachings of the piano. His mother was still ill, having not gotten any better, and he insisted he return home immediately. Mr. Hapsfield refused. "Do you want her to die?! Without these treatments she'll be gone within the year, you hear me you little brat!" Jacob ignored his threats and returned home, deciding he'd make sure his mother got better, he knew she'd make it. She'd stay inside this coming spring while he expanded the apple fields and quarantined the disease from the healthy trees. When summer came he'd pull some more jobs on the side, some music gigs, and in the Fall he'd do all the harvesting. She died that winter. A year of work and she only got worse. The doctors did all they could, the nurses tried their best to help out, but it didn't matter. It was meaningless. He was the last member of his family. It was left in her will that Jacob be left to Mr. Hapsfield, who had always taken such good care of Jacob and trained him so well. When the new year came, so too did the scratches. They were louder than before, gnawing at him, filled his brain. Old bird songs were replaced slowly to rhythmic scratches. Mr. Hapsfield was displeased. "You think this is funny!!?" He screamed at the boy, "You think this little act of rebellion will get you anywhere?!" He threw a chair across the room, it smashed into the wall beside Jacob, splinters flying off and scratching his face. Jacob sat quietly, he couldn't do it. He couldn't find the tunes. He couldn't hear the notes, he couldn't hear the harmonies, all he could hear were scratches in the walls. "Fine," his master marched over, "We'll get this sorted out real fast." He jerked Jacob off the piano bench and carried away into a far-off room. Then, he returned and pushed the piano too, Jacob numbly followed behind. His master led him to the basement, it's cement walls causing every footstep to echo, every scrape of the piano's wooden legs to be magnified. He forced Jacob down into the seat, put the record on, and marched up the creaky wooden steps before simply shouting, "PLAY!" Which was followed by the slamming of the door. Jacob sat there, and listened. It was an old song, very old, and he thought carefully about the notes. "D-D", scratch, "G" "B-G" "D-D", scratch, "G" "B-G" "D", the record scratches again, "G" "A-B-A-G", the scratches echo louder, "F-Sharp" "G-A". The scratching continued to echo and Jacob's fingers twitched, and he soon found himself playing along with the record. The scratches reverberated within Jacob's mind, they gnawed at the very edge of his sanity. His eyes were wide with fear and his heart heavy with terror. As much as he wanted it to stop, needed the scratches to stop- he couldn't. He just couldn't. The record player was just across the room but yet his boy demanded he remain in front of that piano. It demanded he play. So, he did. He struggled out the notes, over and over again. He got maybe a whole verse in until the large scratches commanded his attention once more and caused his hands to slip from the keys, or they'd cause his foot to kiss the pedal. Over and over and over again he's try, and yet he only got worse. He never got better. That old piano's strings rung out, their discordant melodies haunting his mind and acting as the accompaniment to the cacophonous melody of those scratched. His master was not pleased. Jacob found that the locks extended beyond the basement door now. His legs were chained to the piano's. He was denied water and bread for hours, maybe days. He'd begun to be canes upon his back by every hour, the large welts rubbing and itching along his back beneath his scratchy clothes. His hard-wooded bench was made torturous with small tacks he had to sit on as he played. He got to rest, no joy, no light beyond that of the candles, and he would go weeks without a single morsel of bread or a drop of water. As the records played, a new song every short while, his worst agony was from those damned scratches. They were no long from the record, but like rats within the walls. Everywhere. Swarming, gnawing, clawing at the cement. They scratched at his sanity, bleeding his mind slowly until all that remained was a sickly black ichor. A plague. The piano's notes were replaced in his mind with nothing but that sound, the sound he's come to know more than he ever knew his parents. He sat in the dark of that cement basement, his body and mind fading further and further away from our reality, drifting into that dark void where only the visions artist's dwell, where tortured souls and enlightened minds reside. An infinity of stars waiting, pretty lights that flashed red and blue, and yellow ones dotting the sky. Voices whispered to him here, whispered to him things about his master, about his house, what they found. Things about the apples, poisonous apples meant to eliminate the workers, a bad seed that soured the tree, and greed and avarice. When Jacob awoke, he found himself in a room of light and sounds, surrounded by people in white. They'd stuffed his back with white that caught the red, and they'd done the same for his hands too. Needles and tubes fed into his body, a small "beep" rung out keeping near-perfect time in his body's song. "It's gonna be all right now," said a doctor, leaning over pressing a cool metal disk to his chest. "That man can't hurt you anymore. He's gone." A few years passed, years of counseling, therapy, and investigations. Jacob was a ward of the state, his life dictated by the laws of others. His mind was still so loud, so full of those symphonies of clawing sounds. He was banned from the piano, and all instruments for a while but they decided to allow him to try some woodwinds and brass instruments instead. Just no strings, and no scratches. Now, Jacob years and years later Jacob was revisiting that house, the one gifted to him in his late master's will. He's come back to find something, find something he's forgotten from his haunted childhood. He's checked everywhere though, everywhere, and in the study of the house that's when he sees it, the newspaper headline. "Jacob Winslow, Piano Prodigy!" That's what the paper read, an old black and white picture of himself staring back at him, his child form holding a large trophy and immense check- but his eyes were empty and his nails were short. "P- Piano Prodigy?" He thought to himself. Maybe, just maybe that's what he was looking for. To play the piano? To play his song? The house sat quietly, and every creaky step across it's floorboards let out a long wooden groan that resided somewhere within Jacob. He walked past the basement door and examined the piano room, the foyer, the dining room, the lounge, and even every bedroom upstairs as well as the old abandoned attic which had grown over in centuries old spiderwebs, their owners fat on the blood of what resided in the house. Still, nothing. Just as he was about to leave the old manor though, as he heard the large wooden apple-wood door "THUNK" behind him, as he marched his way down the stairs, climbed into his car and placed his hands on the wheel- the radio came on. It was an old melody, a very old one. Perhaps the one from his childhood? Something in his mind screamed out to him, "Run!" The high beams of the car completely hidden by the night, only the pale yellow moon flickering above. It was late- his mouth was dry, and his stomach growled. His back itched in anticipation. Yet he still listened, unable to pry his hands off the wheel, to simply lift them up me go, legs stuck to the pedals of the car. Jacob sat there, and listened. It was an old song, very old, and he thought carefully about the notes that played across the radio, the static of being in a poor-reception chirping in. "D-D", bzzzz, "G" "B-G" "D-D", bzzzshsh, "G" "B-G" "D", the radio broke out into static again, "G" "A-B-A-G", the scratches echo between it's notes, "F-Sharp" "G-A". The song continued to echo and Jacob's fingers twitched, and he soon found himself playing along with the radio in that car. Not playing the notes, however, but playing to the scratch- to the static. His fingers twitches across the ivory wheel in tandem with the radio's static, and so he continued. As the song looped over, and over again- he scratched more and more across each note he was meant to play. The melody was beautiful, it played out so well in his head. He lost track of time, he felt just pleasure. The wood beneath him croaked and groaned, his body shivered and quakes from the cold and dark basement, his body ached and his heart and mind both throbbed in searing pain from some unknown malignancy. Jacob, his eyes shut tight still finally opened them and saw what had happened. There he was, back in that concrete room, but this time smaller. In front of him- the piano. The lift was dim, only illuminated by a candle eternally near being sniffed out by it's own wax. No record was in the room, but the scratches echoed, louder and louder. The piano he sat by was covered in them, and as he tried to get up from the bench he couldn't. There were no chains or ropes, just the warping of wood and flesh merged as his legs had fused to the piano's. His back seared and throbbed against the freezing cold air, like fire being sniffed out by the void, and did so rhythmically as newly fresh and warm pools raced down his flesh. His master's voice called out around him, from everywhere within the room. From everywhere beyond the room. It's direction and distance seeming to shift rampantly and wildly as if it's location were changing, as if his location was changing? Then, he heard it. An old song on the piano, a young boy's voice, and the disapproving shouts of a cruel master. Jacob tried to scream but all that came out were cacophonous piano notes, which only prompted the boy to be chastised more, the man believing it to be his fault. Jacob looked down, felt with his quaking and trembling fingers and felt them- small marks and groove within the piano wood. Not just there, but everywhere, along every cement wall. There were no windows, and no doors, only scratch marks. And so Jacob looked down at his hands, at his cracked and bloodied fingernails, and began to play a song across the cement. 

Submitted August 15, 2019 at 11:28AM by FlynnXa https://ift.tt/31zoqVc