His hands rested lightly on the keys, piano keys.

Stark black slapped almost barbarically on white; a seductive trail of dark sins marring would be perfection, lingering over a perfectly arched neck and tracing the hollow at one's throat, where soft white skin is found to be exposed and vulnerable.

He smiles, captivated by her pain- yes, sweet pain, the eventual root of his demise, the eradication of all the pieces of his soul. Her pain, captured in his eyes. His pain, reflected in hers. He could never tell whose was whose anymore- perhaps it was all hers... or all his. His soul was in pieces, each singular existence intricately woven into a tangled web of errant delicate threads too thin to deduce one true color- resembling nothing of the iridescence of transparency but neither mirroring the unfathomable black of his being, and certainly not white- white was always too innocent, too ghostly. The death pallor.

White was eternity, and black was hell. He knew this, thus he knew of the misconceptions. No, dear little ones, Hell wasn't red; Hell was embedded in these keys, softly and silently until with a slam of finality the smooth, elegantly curved black lid bites down on one's fingers, fingers which had once run feverishly over the entire length of the piano, tainting white with grime, oil, dirt, forgetting that the partial can be more than the whole.

Fingerprints from hell.

He observed now, then in one sudden fluid motion uncrossed his ankles and stood up, pushing away from the piano and almost knocking over the small leather topped stool. Almost, but not quite, he thought, proceeding to languidly brush himself down. And now, ever the observer, he saw.

Black droplets sliding off the smooth skin of his pale, translucent arm- blue veins too evident on the inside of his wrist, dripping languorously into the recess of what lay beneath, the ripples of which sliding outward as silently and stealthily as the steps of a predator hunting its prey.

[One day, I want to hear you play the piano]

Dark waters as beguilingly calm as the looking glass of vanity, mirroring his every move, action, intention, but it wasn't vanity imprinted on his mind, she was. He loved the way she thought him a manifestation of evil in raw, physical form. Each note, each key, each tone, each pause woven into a rhythm that pulsated with every rise and fall of her breath- oh yes, he knew she was troubled by it- her large, haunted eyes showed it; her sensitive snow white skin betrayed by the sizzling of a red hot coal poker, by the poignant smell of charred flesh that slid like a thick, dark honey down one's throat. She said he had betrayed her. But then, she was the one who had willingly taken away his blank, white mask to reveal the grotesque malfunction of the immorality which had once lain happily dormant beneath it.

She had pulled out the monster with her own hands, such small hands, so gentle, delicate, so easily...

crushed.

He was the sole figure of guilt riding into the haunts of innocence.

[I want to hear you play death]

Death was a tough game to play; death was everything. It was in a way of every conceivable object ever to be imagined, seared into their destinies like black writing on a pristine white page, until with a sudden jerking motion, that page is either ripped out of existence, or into existence much like the way a black hole rips into the universe, leaving only a jagged torn edge in the little black book of their lives as a forlorn reminder of the page that once was.

He took up chess, and the stake was her life. She had laughed it off, trusted him completely, eyes almost as soft as her skin, lips vulnerable as a child's, slightly chapped, with a single indent in the middle of the top lip- the old description fitted like a glove- roses filled with snow. Smiling, she had reached out, ignoring the hunter's stalk of ripples sliding out in ever expanding spheres... that is, until they had slid over her. He took a white chess piece, an ironic parody of the knight in shining amour, twirled it deftly in his fingers and with a powerful flick of his wrist slammed it on a black piece, crushing it so only splinters remained. Force was power. It was then that he thought it was a pity, had he known the piece was made of wood perhaps he would have been more careful. Now the piece was broken, irreparable- or no one had the patience to stop and pick the splinters up, glue them together. There were too many of them.

She brushed the splinters off with her hands, hands not unlike his own. She had always loved neatness- another angle on the conceptual purity. She had thought that there were many pieces like that left, that each piece was the same- a single insignificant element of a whole to be disregarded and easily replaced.

[I want to read your soul]

He leaned forward, observing the other player, the opposition, the nemesis, and hearing, as though in accompaniment to the lingering echoes of falling droplets and the quintessential melting away of his soul... the piano. He heard the piano player.

He wasn't the player.

Lilting music spoke of the desolate emptiness which signified nothing, drawn out notes bittersweet and resonant, echoing within the dark confines of his twisted mind, urging him over the brink. So simple, just one, little step and-

It was then that he realized, he was the one who had been branded.

Chosen.

Special. The word was bitter on the tip of his tongue.

Long, pale, slender fingers flashing fast- a blur of white, a smudge of grey, and a tone that was but the more definite under the harsh lighting. The black band around her ring finger flashed mockingly at him.

The darkness wasn't his, it had only slid over him, carrying him along with the current, and she, the creator of the mask, had watched. Silently. The prey never knew it was being hunted. He realized in that singular moment that injustice and immorality, death and hell, pain and suffering, they weren't always black- weren't always ugly. It was sometimes an aching tangible beauty, bathed in soothing white warmth, a corporeal thing, a touchable sustenance so close and yet always dancing just out of reach, so frustratingly far away. If only he could stretch a little further, he could reach out with trembling fingers to learn a lesson best left to the unknown, a lesson learnt too late. Almost. To be burnt like a moth drawn irresistibly to a dancing flame. Appearances deceived, only the soul spoke of indefinite truths.

Betrayal.

He stared at the antagonist.

Death leaned over the chessboard.

[Checkmate.]