Music & Famine #1 (complete)

    Back in the day when my father was alive, he was a tyrant and a brute. He saw it as his role as God to rain down punishment and his divinity on the mortals we were supposed to protect. My siblings and I were made to use our gifts to further his supposed endeavors. He thought he was noble, he and his four knights worked together causing all sorts of disasters for the newly thriving and barely surviving mortals.

    Needless to say, my siblings and I staged a coup. We placed our eldest sister, Garla, on the throne, and she told us to go out and spread our gifts in the way they were supposed to be shared. My gift was music and I was finally able to share it the way it was supposed to be. Through celebrations and parties, through dance and art, I was finally able to see my treasure become something more than a battle cry or solemn hymn. Music was meant to uplift, not bring fear and sorrow. 

    I mostly traveled, going to all my siblings’ temples to bring the music to them and their followers. I spread music, sharing it with the people and showing them how they could create it themselves and make it their own. The more music in the world, the farther I was able to go. The farther I went, the louder the music became. The louder the music, the more I felt the wretchedness of my father melt away and turn into a power all its own. 

    Eventually, Garla convinced me to settle and I created my own temple. My music was everywhere and the mortals were working wonders with it. They flocked to my temple to show me their creations. Their instruments, their songs, their joys in life now that I had given the gift to them and shared it. I blessed the talented and untalented alike, for as long as they loved music and carried songs within them, they were my children.

    I hold festivals and banquets at my temple on a near constant. Nothing brings me more joy than to bring a little light into the people. Even with my father gone, there are still dark times for everyone. Darkness, whether the absence of light or the horrible dread we all feel, never goes away, no matter how much goodness is put into the world. There will always be shadows willing to darken our doorways and foul our moods.

    The hullabaloo and jubilation of life is what inspires me and makes me thrive. Back in the days of having to bear the weight of my father’s oppressive thumb, I was meek and small. My music was used for terror, for canons and for the mayhem of the four knights. Some of my siblings suffered like I did, but none of them went through the depressions I did. My powers were weak and therefore, I was more abused by our father. My depression spiraled me, took me down and out, only making me more pathetic in my father’s eyes. His death saved me and I will never again let any shadow of his darken my doors.

    My temple is ever growing as new music evolves and blossoms. New rooms appear to celebrate each style. My halls are infinite and now small art is ignored. One of my most favorite things in the world is children. I never got to be a child and the purest most fantastic music I have ever heard has come from them. My temple in part is dedicated to lost children and orphans, and I fill my halls with their laughter and love. Each birthday is celebrated and rejoiced. Each child, no matter who they are, is given a pedestal and loved greatly. Some children find families, some start them, and others have stayed with me and helped the next generation. As time has gone on, my temple has become a place of learning and education for those who adore music. Children come and go, bringing their gifts and their wonder, and I feel the darkness my father left in me becoming light. But I know the darkness is still there, it is a warning and a reminder to me. It makes me love the darkness inside others and help them find a way to make it light again.

    Spring has come at last and I am hosting the annual festival. It is also the anniversary of my temple, so the hoopla is going to be uproarious! I have planned so many things and I want to make the celebration seem endless. I have planned banquet after banquet, and infinity of drinks and fireworks to wake my siblings for ages.

    During the day, the festivals will reign. The children have been working themselves to the bone to prepare their presentations and performances. Then at night, the parties will begin and last until the last person falls asleep. It may seem like a gluttonous display, but Spring only happens once a year. At least, that’s how I justify it in my mind.

    It is during the full moon, when the party is in full swing and the celebration is hitting its peak. I am playing the piano with the band when the fireworks suddenly go off. The display shoots into the crowd, going through the temple and along the grounds. The people scatter, screaming and trying to run from the bolts of fire. Then there is a great cacophony of sound and fury. There are screams of terror, and a great multitude of smoke and ash. A billowing cloud bursts into my temple, knocking down the doors and shattering all the stained glass. 

    The tables for the banquet are toppled and trampled as the monstrous bull raises its head and smoke billows from its nostrils. Riding on its skeletal back is someone I know and recognize. I had thought they had vanished with their three brothers, but apparently they have still been lingering somehow.

    The tall and willowy frame on the bull’s back leaps down. They are dressed all in red finery. They have billowing sleeves and tall spiked heels. I remember their face well, but that is not the one they have. They’re wearing a great red skull where their face once was with a magnificent red hat upon their head.

    They take the hat off and bow low before me. “We are pleased to see you, Etude. It has been a long while.” They rise again and, behind the eyes of the skull, I see the flicker of fire and then smoke billows from the open jaws. 

    “Keres,” I whisper and fold my arms against my chest. “What the absolute fuck is this horrid and monstrous display?” I wave my arms out. “Those doors were made by Amondous Ve Della Maour!” I roar. “He’s been dead over a hundred years! Each stained glass window was forged by artists long gone. And you destroyed them? For what fucking purpose, you absolute piece of shit!” I stomp my foot and every instrument in the place sounds off.

    Keres chuckles and cracks their neck. “We heard the celebration and wished to join.” They look around, seeing all the food splattered and trampled on the ground. “Such a display,” they snarl. “We have seen much decadence and waste in our time, but this is a show of excess beyond our wildest measure.” They look back up at me, striding towards me as their bull feasts on the waste. “We came to see you, but to also warn you.”

    “Fuck you,” I spit. 

    Keres chuckles. “I don’t remember you being such a foulmouthed shit.” They look me up and down. “I don’t remember you like this at all. You were shorter then.”

    I step towards them, towering over them even in their fabulous heels. “I am far from the wretched being that was squelched and used by their father. Yet you seem to be the same arrogant and self-righteous prick as I remember.”

    Keres scoffs. “I am quite turned on by this.”

    I curl my lip and rear back. “Do you plan on offending me more?” I ask. “Do you want me to kick your ass from here to kingdom come? Or do you prefer I just kill you outright?”

    Keres throws their skull back and laughs. Fire and soot spews from their mouth and I come to realize there is no head behind the skull, only the stump of a neck. “You think you can kill the Knight of Famine?”

    I snap my hands to my waist. “I’d really, really like to.” 

    “You have your father’s sass, I’ll grant you that,” Keres sneers.

    They said the wrong thing. I scream, and every instrument and song in the place screams. They rattle what remains of the windows and shake the halls. Keres ducks and covers their head as they drop to their knees. 

    I stop and the world goes quiet. I breathe in hard and stomp over to Keres. “From this moment forward, you will be my servant! Until every wall is patched, every window fixed, and every speck of dust and malevolence gone, you will serve me!”

    “I think we’re going to throw up,” Keres groans.

    “Then you will clean it up!” I snarl. “You have shamed my home. You have tormented my people! You will serve me until you die, for all I care!”

    Keres retches, and bile and ash spill from the mouth of the skull. I grimace and turn away to tend to the people and see the children. As I am not watching, I suppose Keres tried their luck to leave the temple, but as they did, they were met with a nasty shock. They went through the arches of the door and were slung back, tossed and smeared against the wall. They crumpled, falling onto the stairs in a tangled heap.

    “Do you not fucking listen?” I spew at them.

    Keres grunts and moans as they stand. “You will not own us.”

    “I already do,” I sneer at them as I lead the people into the temple to recover and rest.

    The next morning, I wake early to see what has become of the great hall and if Keres has taken their warning seriously. I find the hall unchanged, it is the same carnage as it was that night. Keres is lying asleep before the fire, their hat covering their head.

    I storm over to them, ripping away the hat and tossing the red skull into the fireplace.

    “What the fuck are you doing?” Keres snarls as they sit up. They reach their thorny hands into the flames and retrieve the skull.

    I was right, their head is gone. All that remains is a stump of a neck. Whoever cut their head off did so at an angle. The left side slopes up, leaning down to the right, where it is cut off just at the shoulder. Their neck looks like a used lipstick. 

    Keres places the skull back on their neck. “We cannot leave this place. What more do you want from us? We don’t have blood! Your father tried to get that and he failed.”

    I scowl at him. “I told you everything last night.” I jab my finger out to the hall. “You are to repair and fix everything you destroyed. Only then, will you be able to go and be set free.”

    “We are doing no such thing. We are not touching this place.”

    “Then you’re here forever and ever, Keres!” I kneel down to get in their face. “I am not bothered. But you will be for the rest of your days.”

    “We hate how much we like you doing this to us,” Keres chuckles.

    I grimace and walk away from them, going about finding a new place to set up for the day. I am not going to clean up their mess, they will do it come hell or high water. Keres and I are bound now, and they will serve me until their purpose is done. It might take decades for them to mind me, but I can wait that long. I will see them under my boot long before I ever release them.

    The festival starts and I am returning from it to the temple to get some rest. I am walking through the halls when I come across Keres standing in the middle of the hallway. I glare them down and they tilt their head back.

    “What are you doing?” I ask incredulously. 

    Keres shrugs. “Oh. We’re sorry. Being trapped here forever, we thought that meant that this place became our home. We are simply enjoying our new home.”

    “But what are you doing?” I repeat myself.

    They chuckle darkly and shake their head. “We are shocked by how much you resemble your father. Rooms dedicated to you? Not just one, but dozens upon dozens. You’re infatuated with yourself to a point your father would never cross.”

    I grit my teeth and clench my fists so tight, the knuckles pop.

    “We assumed you would be the humblest of the children, but look what a little fame will do to someone.” They sigh. “Outright opulence. The vulgarity of it all makes us sick.”

    “These rooms are not to celebrate me, but music and all things attributed to it! These rooms are for songs and instruments. For legends and hope!” I stride towards them. “How dare you insult me by comparing me to that monster?”

    “Now, now.” Keres tuts and wags their finger at me. “No need going and insulting monsters by comparing them to your father.” They point to their neck. “A monster would have let us keep our head. Your father decided that we did not deserve them. Our siblings and us were all decapitated following your coup.”

    I grimace. “Oh my god.”

    “Your father blamed us rather than himself,” Keres snarls. “So any chance we get to pester one of you insolent brats is good enough. We saw your hedonism and decided to foul it and taint it. We wanted to remind you what it is like to hunger.”

 “Do what your anger will towards me,” I kneel down towards them. “But these people remember hunger. They know you more than you think you do. These are the people in the world who have suffered most and I am taking care of them. There are children here still battling malnourishment. Some mothers have lost their babies due to your ilk. I take in the sick, weak, and starving because that was who I was under my father’s rule.”

“Perhaps we are your shadow then,” Keres snarls.

My breath leaves me for a moment and soon Keres is walking away from me. Their words are a haunting refrain in my mind. The echo repeats and vibrates the walls of my thoughts so much I cannot think of anything else. Who are they to say such things to me?

That evening, the party goes on in the gardens, a place Keres cannot reach since it is outside the temple. As I celebrate and sing with the people, I notice them standing in the doorway, glaring down at us.

I climb the stairs and stand before them. “Please go away,” I hiss. “You’re disturbing me and scaring the people.”

“You place yourself at the center of these beings?” They ask. “You allow them to touch you and behold you? Why?”

“Mortals’ lives are so short,” I answer. “They deserve me, but I don’t deserve them.”

Keres scoffs. “Pretty words from a pretty mouth.”

I scowl at them and cross my arms against my chest.

“If we were not so proud, we would let you do all sorts of things to us,” they laugh. Smoke spills down from the mouth of the red skull.

“You are disgusting!” I snarl at them. “I am glad my father dealt away with your head. No,” I then huff. “I wish you did have a head, so I could slap your face.”

There is a silent pause and then Keres laughs. “Oh my, you know what we like.”

I take the skull off their head and place it gently just outside the door, in just a place they can’t reach it.

“If you’re worried about us scaring the people with that one, then they’re going to be much, much more frightened of us now like this.” They flourish their hand along their slanted neck.

“I’m none too worried about that.” I scoff and look back down at the crowd as they celebrate. Only a few are paying any attention to Keres and my conversation.

“Didn’t your father do the same?” Keres asks.

I go to kick the skull, then stop myself. I sigh and rub at the bridge of my nose. “Please. Just stop talking about him!”

“For someone you say is gone from your life, you still hold on to him quite tightly.” Keres whispers to me. “You cannot hold him as an excuse forever. You cannot let him hold onto you, even though he’s gone.” Keres touches the barrier between the temple and the outside. “We know how tight his noose was. We saw you hanging from it several times.”

I glare down at Keres and then cross my arms against my chest. “You saw it, but you did nothing to halt it.”

“Look at us!” Keres snarls. “How could we? Your father held us in higher contempt than he ever did you. Our siblings and us were so controlled by him, even a breath out of line got us punished.” They place their hand around what remains of their neck. “He did this to all of us because you grew a backbone.”

I glare down at Keres. “I started the coup because I was sick of being my father’s stress toy. Because I was sick of how my siblings were being treated. I am sorry that man lashed out at you when all you did was serve him. I truly am sorry for that!”

Keres suddenly turns on their heel.

“Wait a second!” I snap. “Where are you going?”

Keres turns and waves. “I’m cleaning up the hall.”

I chase them down. “Why now? What changed?”

Keres sighs. “Your father never apologized, even when he knew he was wrong. I just wanted to make sure his shadow wasn’t that strong in you.”

I furrow my brow at them. “Because I apologized?”

Keres shrugs. “Sometimes that’s all it takes.”

I’m a bit confused by this. All the while they have been here, I figured I would be dealing with a monster for the rest of time. Yet all it took was them knowing there wasn’t a hint of my father in me?

I turn back to the party happening in the garden, but my mind is focused elsewhere. I turn to the door to see Keres is standing there, but every time, I see no shade of them. Eventually, I can no longer take the curiosity and I go down to the great hall, where the floors have been cleared away. All the destruction from the night before is gone and swept away.

“You just couldn’t stand it, could you?”

I look up and see Keres walking along the ceiling. They kick at a firework lodged into the ceiling and sigh. “You know? We have done many an entrance before, but nothing quite like last night.” They kneel down and dislodge the embedded firework. They shake it around and chuckle. “Have you never had someone crash your party before?”

I huff and glare up at them. “You’re confusing, you know?”

“Indeed, we are.” They drop the firework and let it fall to the ground. “But why do you care?” They stride over to the wall and descend down it, walking at an angle perpendicular to me.  They stop as their mask comes to my head. “You got what you wanted. Granted-” they scoff and look to the windows. “I am no master artist, replacing these windows will be...a feat.”

“You were defiant before. Yet you make claims that an apology will heal all wounds and you’ll do the task I cursed you with?” I flap my arms out. “You are as maddening as you are grotesque.”

Keres shivers. “Ooh. We love it when you do that to us.”

I roll my eyes so hard it actually hurts. “What kind of predilections do you have? I’m starting to think you like my punishment!”

“We would like it more if you added chains and a uniform. Perhaps some mild whipping. But the shoes-” they point down to their devilishly high heels. “The shoes always stay.” They stride away from me and pick up the firework they dropped. 

“You still haven’t answered my questions!” I snap.

“Have we?” They laugh. “We told you that the apology was all we needed. You cursed us in a moment of heat and fire, much like your fa...that man used to.” They quickly correct themselves. “You admitted you were wrong. You admitted it was wrong at how our siblings and we were punished. You are much more than that man would have ever become and for that we do not mind the servitude forced upon us.” They shrug and let out a long sigh. “We do not like it, but we can accept it. Perhaps in time we will even like you.”

I look down at the ground then back at them. “I can accept that as well.”

Keres laughs. “Good, because you have to!” They flip the tip of my nose and turn back to their cleaning.