The organ’s notes fell heavy with sorrow onto the church’s dais, grandiose yet bewitching. Cloaked in the darkness that harbors ghosts, a song of twisted love and dining demons emerged, its audience the horror-ridden sculpture of Jesus nailed on the cross, the sleeping candles long blown out, and the wicked yet beautiful stained glass windows.

The organist saw only his ungrateful white fingers moving of their own accord to their own pace, releasing baths of melancholy in their wake. He played here every night, accustomed to the darkness that enfolded him and the feel of the dusty keys beneath his fingers — and with each session, he would pulse with a new, raw energy.

However he felt nothing but exhaustion today — the fatigue wrapped around him, his hands resting woefully on the last notes instead of landing with finality. He tipped his head back, fingers still imprisoned by the keys and foot still seized by the pedal — and stared into the abyss, haunted by his own playing.

Further away a boy stood up from the last bench of the church, drawn inexplicably to the organ and its performer.

Early in the morning, when the sky had faded to dawn, Max said his morning prayer and blew out the candle. He dressed studiously, tucking his clean white shirt into his clean black pants, and combing his shiny black hair to the side. With loving diligence, he slipped on his shoes after his socks, and laced them up tightly - to the point past irritating and to the point almost painful. He never wanted to slip and fall again, get dirty or get hurt. It was embarrassing and awkward, and most importantly shameful.

He went through the practiced routine of eating his modest breakfast, hoping to seem grateful with his quick spoonfuls, but never in a beast-like manner. He even tied a napkin around his neck, a habit of decency that he was careful not to let anyone see.  

“Good morning, Max,” greeted his mother, and he returned the greeting.

“Remember to eat your own lunch, and never accept meals from anyone else,” she reminded him. He replied with a nod, courteously taking his lunch bag from her.

With his backpack snug on both shoulders and lunch bag gripped in his right hand, he left home and followed the path to school. He’d starting walking himself last year, when he was only eleven. Now he was twelve, the most divine number in the universe. He felt proud when he thought of this, and easily got caught up in his fantasies, so much so that he always ended up running into people or things, becoming clumsy and dirty in the process. That wasn’t his way. He regretted ever feeling proud, and turned his eyes back down to the ground.

But he couldn’t always look down — or else he wouldn’t ever be able to see where he was going, so he glanced up and down, scanning his surroundings constantly, predicting where a car might turn or when a person might accidentally bump into him. He didn’t mind, if someone did bump into him, but that would rumple his clothes, and who knew where they’d last been. Lots of people didn’t wash their hands after handling money and lots of people didn’t clean their purses or their shoes.

It was baffling, to think about the world in such dirty terms, but Max couldn’t help it. He spent his whole time thinking about the dirty things people did or didn’t do, that he almost didn’t realize he had arrived at school. All he could do was scold himself and make sure it never happened again.

Max often went through his day thinking about the things in front of him — he sat tucked into the corner of the classroom, in the front row by the teacher’s desk. Here he was able to see everything so clearly and in focus, as if he were the only one in the room. But it was torture in ways, too — when the teacher left a little white chalk mark at the top of the board, and forgot to erase it — or when she did erase it and there were still ghosts of white left.

These little actions bit at the very core of his mind, often leaving it scratched and misshapen, to the point where he spent most of his time feeling left behind in class, as if everyone had run off without him, and he was left staring at the cabinet left slightly ajar, wondering if anyone would ever close it.

He despised feeling this way, letting people see him so vulnerable — if the other kids saw his meager notes they would think him stupid, and then because he was stupid he was ugly, and because he was ugly he was dirty and delusional, obviously impure. And if he was impure then he was going to Hell, and Hell would only be full of murderers and gluttonous old men.

But it was hard for Max to believe the pastors when they said such things. To him, people were dirty and evil but they wouldn’t go to Hell, or Heaven. The only image he could see was never seeing an image again, and never being able to imagine any images at all. His body would turn to ash and never feel consciousness again.

The thought of nonexistence left him nauseated and mad with fear. For a while, he would only sit inside the abyss, and rise from it at midnight.

At midnight he always found his solace, the only source of comfort to him in this world full of ludicrous worshipping. The devils were all around, and no one noticed besides Max — Max and the organist at midnight.

He arrived at the bench a minute before the clock struck twelve, concealed by the stiff darkness of the church, and subject to the organist’s spontaneous flashes of feelings, intertwined in the notes. Max found the playing enchanting, almost to the point of hypnotizing — it thrilled him to his core.

It wasn’t only the emotion laced into everything else, it was the fact that the organist knew how Max felt. The organist was the only person who could ever express the gruesome quality of Max’s life, the only one who would ever understand. In that way, Max had come to see the organist as his sole companion, the one who would take care of him and listen to him.

No one could tell him what to believe, how to act or where to draw his moral boundaries — here the reality was being spread out before him on a tapestry, and his beliefs lay buried deep in the threads, untouched and pure.

Twelve minutes past, and the organist’s last note faded into silence.

Max stood quietly to leave, but something kept him waiting — a swelling choir of voices, the soft opera growing ever louder in his ears. The sonorous collection of voices fell like petals, illuminating the organist in white, dusky light. It was the first time he had ever seen the organist, hands and feet suspended like a puppet in their playing.

Max was stunned by the beauty of it all, the perfection. His shoes clicked on the church floors as the opera lulled him forward, until he was kneeling on the steps of the dais, face turned up and catching the soft white light on his eyelashes.   

“Please,” he whispered, hands clasped together, “you are the only one who knows me, and I am the only one who knows you.”

The organist turned to stare at him, eyes filled with black, with all the heinous secrets of the abyss. Softly above him, the voices crescendoed.

Max continued, “I pray every night that you continue to play, to keep me alive as I am.”

It was as if the organist saw straight through him. His lips formed the wispy ends of words, the phrase crawling slowly from his mouth. He said, “The ones who live in Lacrimosa, die.”

Max, enveloped in these words, saw his own reflection jump alive in the abyss.

The opera reached its last note, and both song and light were severed, leaving Max on his knees in the middle of a dark church.

He left in a state of child-like adoration. He was speechless with wonder, wary of the foreboding but awakened by the words. He felt the discontent of the organist, and his own sorrow, but there was a harmony nestled within it.

As he ambled along the empty street, he realized his shoelace was dragging on the ground, picking up all sorts of grime. His feet stalled, and he began to weep.