A short story for you all. ^__^ Forgive the errors in it as far as grammer and spelling go, please. And a warning: it's kinda long and has a small dealing with demons (though it is portrayed as evil in this story).
The Violin Case He had been playing the violin since he was only four years of age. Every day he would play for at least an hour, normally three. But it was routine, and he saw no reason for inspiration or love in his work. So, though very skilled, there was no spirit in his music.
This went on for years, until he was seventeen.
It was an accident, truly. He had been walking down the street, trying to get a new book to distract him from the music he had to play. The lone strain of a voilin note, normally unnoticable in its simplicity, had caught his attention from a back alleyway.
With caution from the fact it was a back alleyway and curiosity at the beauty of such an unspectacular note, he had begun to make his way toward the sound. A breath was drawn in sharply as the music crescendo-ed into a flurry of stacatos, only to become legato in another heartbeat. It was amazing, breathtaking, marvelous. And yet for all his ability to place what he could hear, he could not find this violinist. For hours he searched, the music stopping only thrice, just to begin anew.
At last, he was forced to retire to his home, the echoes of the violin ringing throughout his head. His eyes misted over as he went into his home, and his parents were worried of some sort of illness.
For weeks, months, he played his violin nearly nonstop. At times, his fingers would bleed from holding the strings for hours and hours at a time; at other times, he would play into exhaustion, trying despertly for some strain of perfection. Everyday, he tried to attain the perfections of what he had heard. When he played, now, he would bring listeners to tears. But, to him, it sounded imperfect, crass, flawed. No matter what he did, no matter how much of his soul he placed into his work, it was never enough.
Some speculated that he no more soul left inside of his body, but that it was now captured in his violin. Many of these same people believed that if his violin were destroyed, he would also die, such was his apparent devotion to it.
If he were not performing daily functions or playing the violin (be it at home or for a concert), he was walking the streets, hoping to meet the one who had so inspired him. Yet the music he so longed to hear was never there, and the streets seemed silent to his ears. Often, he would return home disappointed and depressed.
The years passed on, and he only became better, though it seemed to be impossible. His parents passed away, and he inherited the fortune he always added to with his performances. People would leave after listening to him speechless and awed, then later call him perfection. This was not what he was looking for, however. He wanted the music of the streets he had heard, the music that had seemed to pulse with the very life of the planet. The notes he played were wrong, twisted; the rythm, too slow or too fast.
It was a light summer's day, the heat so sultry and humid to make most people melt in the rich outfits of the Renaissance. Yet he wandered the streets, searching for his music of inspiration. No matter how much he had wandered that sickeningly hot day, it was the same as before. The music of his heart was not there.
He had left the streets and back alleys to go home. When he at last returned to his home, a man dressed in rags that hinted once at richness and glory was being denied entrance into his home by his manservant. Curious, he walked up to the man, stopping his manservant from using force to remove the appaling man.
"Who are you, Monsieur?" he asked, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the nauseatingly sweet odors cloying about the man, almost like the cheap perfumes of the hookers. The man looked him in the eyes as he turned around.
Power. Power and the sense that this man's body was but a shell. Each tiny movement was as smooth as the legato of an orchestra, each breath kept a perfect tempo. In his hands he held a beautifully well-cared for violin case, one that could take anyone's breath away. In his eyes was all the music of the world, written, unwritten, and to-be written. But there was no pupil or iris; his entire eye was a black drop of liquid that could be the ink upon a sheet of music, not yet dry, or the deep trembling of a cello, echoing about one's head.
"You are Monsieur Talithan?" the man asked, voice a beauty of pounding seas and delicate strains of a long-lost symphony. Numbly, Talithan nodded. "Yes, I am Monsieur Talithan," he managed to get out. The man smiled. "We have business to conduct, Monsieur. Could we perhaps step inside?" The manservant went to speak, only to be cut off by his master. "Yes, yes, let us go in, to my study."
As they went into his study, he wondered why he had agreed to this business. Any other peasant or ragged man he would have told to leave at once. But something about this man wasn't quite human. He pointed to a chair that the man could occupy, then asked, letting years of well-breeding take over, "Tea?" The man's smiled seemed to be that of a snake before it catches its prey. "No, Monsieur Talithan. This shall be very quick business."
Talithan nodded, and his manservant, disgruntled, shut the door behind himself. "Might I ask your name? I do not believe you told me," Talithan asked, curious as to why this man might seem so powerful. The man seemed to ponder for a moment. "You may call me by one of my true names, Asmodeus. You will most likely not remember it when this is over." "I see. And the nature of your business, Monsieur Asmodeus?" Asmodeus' smiled gained a new maliciousness to it. "I am here to make a fair exchange."
Talithan watched him carefully. There was something that was so off about this man that he could not bring himself to trust him. "Go on," he said cautiously. Asmodeus let his smile grow ever more threatening. "You have an admirable skill with the violin. Many regard you as the greatest violinist of our times and the world. I would like to make your skill surpass even that. I can teach you how," he said, smiling that awful smile with his empty eyes of inky black.
Monsieur Talithan began to laugh. "That could take years! You said it would be a short transaction," he exclaimed, chuckling to himself. Asmodeus let the intesity of his silence build, and soon Talithan stopped his chuckling, regarding him again with fear and curiosity.
"It will not take years, Monsieur Talithan. It will take but a moment and a transaction. But first, you must hear what you will learn," he said, a glint of something that was not quite love, but perhaps lust, entering his eyes.
Talithan was so captivated by Asmodeus, like a mouse before a venemous viper, that he half-jumped when the other man moved in a flurry of eighth notes going far too fast for their own good. A moment, and the beautiful violin case was open and rich bloody velvet inside held nothing but a shadow resembling a violin. Asmodeus stood, lifting the shadow into his hands, and Talithan knew that any other who tried to lift this shadow would only have their hands pass straight through it. Asmodeus took the playing position of violinist since the violin came to be, holding his right hand as if hoding a bow. Yet the sunlight would sparkle as it passed through where the bow would be, only to scream and die before it could get past it.
A moment of perfect silence.
And then Asmodeus let the music playe, began to pour out perfection from the shadow violin, and the hand that held no bow moved gracefully as a thousand notes echoed in eternity. The wrong thing in Asmodeus seemed to fade for a moment as he lost himself in his own music, pouring what was left of his soul into it.
Talithan froze, eyes going wide, breath held, heart stopping. This was the music which he had heard all those years ago. Each note, melody, though different from that day, was the same in intent, in beauty. He could not hear anything but the music, the music that surpassed anything on Earth. Nothing else matters, then, because that music flowing from the shadow of a violin was all that he wanted, all he had dreamed of after hearing it all those years ago.
After what seemed an eternity (and even that seemed too little a time to Talithan), Asmodeus let the music fade in one decrescendo of a note. He stopped, lowered the shadow and stood there for a moment, black eyes closed. And then he reverently lowered the shadow back into its case of bloody velvet that could be made out of a thousand spun souls in torture.
Talithan simply continued to stare at Asmodeus in awe. After a few moments of suppressing silence, he could take it no more. "You can teach me how to play like that?" he whispered softly into the room. His voice gained a frantic edge as he said, "How much? Name your price! I'll pay anything to play such perfection!"
Asmodeus smiled at him. "Anything?" he hissed softly, voice still musical, but full of all the wrong notes. Talithan did not notice the change in his urgency. "Yes, anything! On my honor, anything you ask I will pay, if only I can play you just have!" he cried out, begging with his whole being.
"The deal is made," Asmodeus said, but now both his body and voice were changed. Loud crashes and clatters began to enter his perfect voice, perverting it, and his black eyes glowed with the blue fire that devoured souls. Similar flames licked a body of the same shadow as the violin, but so much more dense, like a piece of nothingness cut out and splashed with tarnished silver. The shadow form shaped itself into the parody of a bird and human-- the bird resembled a squawking peacock, a bird of physical beauty and not inner beauty. As he spoke, his words seemed both full of law and no chance of redemption. "Then you shall gain the ability to play as I, Asmodeus, Demon of Music, play. You will pay me with your soul and your love of music, your appreciation of its beauty," the demon clashed, for only the way the voice clashed and paused gave form to words now.
A moment, and then in one of Asmodeus' hands was a mass of white and pink, full of love and something else, only for him to swallow it. A quick heartbeat, and he resembled a being of such glory that it would make any being cry, the lost glitter of a being that could no longer hold such feelings. Talithan collasped at the sight, unable to take both it and the loss of his soul.
When he awoke, on his desk was one beautifully well-cared for violin case, bloody velvet lining the inside.