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Luciana-Phantom
“I wanted him. As one has not wanted another. All the untouched, unhinged corners of his mind. Maybe I wanted him too much. My curiosity peeking behind what it couldn’t contain. A love that took flight as a wounded dove, slowly driving us both insane.”
Papa took his last breath early this morning, just as the sun kissed the curvature of his old, worn-out face.
In the end, the once handsome Giovanni bore more aged lines on his skin than the withered scripture he loved her to read. After that last summer, Erik entered their lives and left just as swiftly as he arrived. The lines on Papa’s face seemed to deepen, folding in upon themselves. Erik was the son he had always wanted, and she had chased him away into the desolate night.
Luci was forbidden from entering his room—the tiny, damp storm cellar where Erik had lived. She remembered nights when she would see the glow of the gas lantern through the creaky floorboards, and hear the sounds of his many gadgets or his voice humming as he played the piano her father had given him after hearing him play on a job site one day.
As she descended the cracked staircase, dust bunnies plagued every corner of the room, and fae made of memories and time pirouetted with dust-made wings as a sliver of light illuminated the space. Music boxes and trinkets she couldn’t decipher lay on his work table near a melted candle, showing the hours he would take in the nights.
Each frozen wax droplet was hinged and kept, much like the memories of the boy who became a man that summer right before her eyes. She closed her amber hues and inhaled deeply, feeling its presence like a lonely sentinel in the corner of the room. Ivory keys, his haunting notes that she swore she could still hear, as she felt her way to the bench he used to sit upon.
Her dainty fingers hovered over each key, and she shivered just as she did when she was younger, fearful he would catch her in his room. “Erik…” She whispered his name and swept her tongue over her plush petal lips, savoring the sweetness of each letter as she spoke his name for the first time in years.
Her Papa was now gone, but in truth, he had been gone long before this day. A part of him never recovered the night his only-begotten son left, and she knew he resented her, even though he would never say it. Erik never truly left that cellar. He was much like the ghost he resembled when he wore that mask.
He stayed with them, his long, skilled fingers playing the notes in their minds and hearts ever since he arrived with her father on that stormy day. Luci’s fingers trembled as they hovered over the ivory keys, the ghostly echoes of Erik’s melodies whispering through the cellar.
She pressed a single key, the note resonating through the room like a distant memory. The sound was both a comfort and a torment, a reminder of what once was and what could never be again. Yet, within the haunting melody, there was a sliver of hope. Each note she played seemed to carry a piece of Erik’s spirit, a fragment of his soul that lingered in the air.
She felt him in every key, his presence woven into the fabric of the music. It was as if he was guiding her fingers, leading her through the darkness. A longing stirred within her, a deep-seated desire to find him, to bring him back into her life. She closed her eyes, allowing the music to wash over her, feeling Erik’s essence in every chord.
The cellar, once a place of sorrow, now felt like a sanctuary, a place where she could connect with him once more. She played on, each note a step closer to the past, a bridge to the future. The music swelled, filling the room with a sense of yearning and possibility. Luci knew that as long as she had the music, she had a part of Erik with her, a beacon of hope in the midst of her grief
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