Ghost Piano

I can smell the rotting wood floor, warped by a hundred years. The roof of the skeleton is still up, but a whole corner of the building is caved in. Bats hang in the corners, mice scurry underneath. I lift up some rusty sheet metal and a kangaroo rat darts blindly into the desert. The wind beats the old building and it creaks and groans with pain. A tumble weed runs through the center of town. There?s no humans here, no cars, but mine. Off in the distance bone colored mountains dance on the surface. There are no clouds in the sky. It?s the end of September, but feels like July.

I think of the 19th century, as I am heading home after dusk.. Men would kill each other over a smallest things. Look at a guy wrong, and he?d murder you. Over in Pioche, Nevada, seventy men were shot dead before someone passed away of natural causes. You go back in time while walking through that town. The only difference is the paved street. Like any place with a bad history, Pioche suffers a severe melancholy, and when you go through some of the historical buildings, they feel haunted.

In the rearview mirror I notice the eastern sky turning maroon and purple. The highway is monotonous. A ghost piano begins to play softly, taking me back.

I pull the car over, and just ponder in silence. This whole world seems crazy. I become restless, because the piano doesn?t stop. It is playing in my head, and I walk out into the darkness of the landscape, beneath the dense starry sky. The beautiful tune brings tears. I take a deep breath and lay on the desert floor, sifting my fingers through cold sand, listening to the dark wasteland beneath. A vehicle passes by on the highway every ten or fifteen minutes, but all I hear is the howling wind, the crickets, the bushes squeaking.