The Requiem

I lift my head towards the skies and weep.

Tonight, drenched in the bittersweet joy of love and loss, I experienced my epiphany. I kissed my beloved Constance and sent her way, for my need to compose had finally overpowered the soul numbing lethargy that had been my companion since the last months.

My notes now arise from the depths of my soul, each one surpassing the last. As my music breathes and shifts like a living organism, my heart soars. The feeling is but short lived.

Next instant, I am drenched in sweat. A pall of doom descends everywhere. He is here. My oldest and worse fear.

The Devil. Tall, dark, fiendishly handsome.

Like every devout catholic, I feared Lucifer all my childhood. I prayed obsessively, my bronze cross and rosary my constant companions. I had imagined Devil as a vile, daemonic spirit who would drag me to hell if I strayed from the Church. Or so had my father said.

Then the youth beckoned. Music became my new religion. My musical genius felt stifled under the Dictums of the Church. 

“You remember.” His throaty laugh fills my chambers, my fading tunes still echoing in the background.

I had convinced myself; it didn’t happen. Long time ago, a night on crossroads, high on opioids, I took a dare. I brazenly threw away my rosary.

“Dear Lord, I lost faith in myself. I foolishly summoned him for answers my faith refused to provide. They said he bestowed exceptional musical prowess and adorned our music with a haunting darkness.” I lament to the skies.

“I embraced the Church that night. I prayed daily. To keep you away.”

The Devil smiled.

“Your music is your truest prayer. This thirst for music runs deep in your blood. You seemed lost, without the knowledge to untangle your soulful notes on paper. Who do you think has been your guide since that night, gently opening your mind to passion and pain that soul-stirring music needs? Certainly not your half-hearted hymns.” 

His silky voice caresses my throat and I recoil. I feel sores over my body, smelling fetid and rotten.

“Amadeus, my protégé, tonight, you have outdone yourself. Your notes echo all the way to my gates. A Requiem for your own death. Genius.” He looks at me like a proud father. My cross rests inverted in his slender fingers.

“Time to honour our deal.” He looks earnest.

“The day you compose your masterpiece, your soul becomes mine,” His deep baritone fills my high-ceilinged chamber. My heart hammers against my ribs. His ebony eyes turn red and in them I see my eternal fate.

And then before my horrified eyes, he metamorphoses. A behemoth human form with a fiery tail that lifts me with his filthy hands and devours me whole.

***

To this day, Vienna bemoans the mysterious death of her musical prodigy – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart’s incomplete Requiem in D minor is an emotionally stirring masterpiece, whose origins hitherto remain shrouded in mystery.

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Image Credit: Pixabay

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