Heaven Knows

9: Dominic

Chapter 9: Dominic

There’s a point in human life where we recreate some things and that recreation usually ends up with the change in ourselves. Just try and look up a ten story building, your dreams can be fifteen stories higher. Try and look at an apple tree, you can grow just as fine and ripe as that. Try and look at a ship, you can travel across the seas. Try and look at a dry leaf, you may end up like that. But you know what? It’s our decisions that change our fate. And right now, I’m Bach’s broken piece of musical shit and a part of Thomas Edison’s 10,000 ways that didn’t work.

A month from now, delegates from Juilliard will be coming over to pick-up some prodigies. I am one of those recruits and I was tasked to perform a piece for them. My piano teacher, Mrs. Byrd, had rounded me up with a set of classical and baroque renditions. But I was stuck with the dilemma of choosing the right piece to perform. How could you possibly tell someone to make a musical piece less complicated when he’s already dead? Might as well send my regards and finger to the musical geniuses wherever they are. I’ve made some alterations to make up with the complications and the tempos but I only made things messier and another set of photocopied musical pieces to doodle.

I was doing the prelude of Bach’s Das Wohltemperirte Clavier when I hit the wrong note. My tempo was desperate fast and aggressive fast which made me suck. Too much for prelude 5 in D-sharp.

I dropped another note and I decided to stop. That’s when I heard someone clapping. I looked up at the entrance of the theatre and I found Heaven. She smiled at me as she took down the aisle. Despite my hysteria and exhaustion, I couldn’t help but smile back at her. I think she’s really an angel. A miracle that took the form of the girl I love.

She made her way to me and I sighed away like a dream. My problems had gone with the wind.

“You’re really good.” she said as she leaned on the piano’s edge.

“I suck.” I said as I wrinkled my nose. “I just keep on hitting the wrong notes.”

“What was it you’re playing?”

“Bach’s Das Wohltemperirte Clavier.”

“The Well-Tempered Clavier.” She translated.

“Ah, I didn’t know you can speak German.” I teased.

She snickered. “I know Bach.”

“Oh?  So you’re immortal or something?”

“Not in the flesh.” She sneered at me. “The pastor used to play his scores before the mass.”

“Great. Well, I hope I am well-tempered as his musical genius. I think it’s starting to get on me.” I sighed as I rearranged the musical pieces on the piano stand. “I might be a demon because his musical piece bothers me.”

Her eyebrows creased like I was talking in an alien language.

“Mortal Instruments.” I said. Her eyebrows rose in question. I was to say “the movie” and “shadow hunters” when I stopped myself. I didn’t want to weird her out all of a sudden. I am already weird for a musical geek.

She pursed her lips as she invited herself to sit beside me. She looked at my photocopies as if she understood them. Then she started to play a few notes. But they weren’t Bach’s. I recognized them as Francis Lai’s because of its familiar tune. Suddenly, I was four again and I was back in my mother’s room listening to her music box.

“So, you have a bit of music major in you.” I said.

She smiled at me as she stopped playing. “My dad taught me.”