The lights came on, and Jordan walked slowly onto the stage in his usual dignified manner. He stood in front of a nine-foot concert grand piano, nodding politely to the audience before speaking.
"And now, Paxton Kim, performing the Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz," he said in a sombre tone before turning and exiting stage left. All was silent.
From stage right, the young Korean-American virtuoso entered silently, wearing a tuxedo. He slid onto the bench, placed a musical score atop the instrument, cracked his knuckles before spreading his fingers out over the keyboard and taking a breath...
After a brief series of taps on the lowest B flat, his hands began swooping quickly and fluidly over the keys, picking up speed with each passing moment, a sense of frantic urgency building in the music. With a preternatural swiftness, his fingers danced across the notes, seeming to cover several octaves at once. The discordant cacophony grew, both in volume and speed, filling the listeners with what could only be described as anxiety.
Relentlessly, the young man battled the mocking notes on his pages, starting to hunch over as he fought to control the music. One of his wrist cuffs popped. His fingers screamed in protest as he dragged them up and down the keyboard, followed by trying to hammer the individual keys into submission. Sweat dripping from his forehead made the black and white keys slippery, and his pulse was racing like the tempo of the piece he was playing.
The seams on one shoulder of his tuxedo frayed and tore away, exposing the soaking white shirt sleeve below. His laces untied as his feet worked the pedals frantically and the sole of one of his shoes broke.
The treated wood around the keys began to smoke.
As the tempo of the music reached a Satanic, frenzied crescendo, Pax's other sleeve fell off, his starched collar popping and smacking him in the face. In exhausted desperation, his lungs on fire, he played on, searching for the end of this Hell somewhere on the sheets through a haze of tears. The assault-rifle staccato of the bass chords frayed both finger tendons and instrument strings.
At last, with an agonizingly long
glissando
, his strength gave out and the last crunch of notes was accomplished by his chin crashing into the keys.
Silence echoed through the concert hall as his unseeing eyes stared into the blackness of the audience, his tongue lolling out of his open mouth and drooping over the edge of the keyboard.
Heedless of the nigh-dead young man behind him, Jordan walked back onto the stage and nodded to the audience.
"And now, Karen's Very Bad Day," he said simply before walking off again.
As some final, desolate treble notes echoed, caused by the piano's inner workings succumbing to the abuse, the lights all went out.
There would be no encore.
***
Mike & Karen
Disclaimer:
All characters are 18 years of age or older while portrayed engaging in sexual activity. This story is a prequel/sequel (sprequel?) to my other work, Alex & Alexa. As always, many thanks and gratuitous panty shots from Freja and Jeanie to my long-suffering editor and beta-reader for their assistance in polishing up and improving this work. Reviews are welcome; flames will be snickered at and deleted with extreme prejudice. Enjoy!
Please Note:
There are incest themes with a secondary couple in this story. Just a forewarning.
Chapter XXIV- Karen's Very Bad Day
One quiet morning...
VLABADA-BOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!
An explosion reverberated through Blackwell Manor and Karen shot upright in bed, her eyes wide. The pictures on the walls rattled, and she heard Valentina, one of the maids, shriek in fright.
"Michael!" she gasped, still not recovered from being shocked out of sleep. "What was that?!"
The titan form of her husband, lying next to and facing away from her under the blankets, shifted slightly, as if turning his immense bulk to cock an ear and listen, while also talking to his wife.
"Mmmmm, was a model rocket exploding outside," he mumbled before turning back on his side to continue sleeping, clearly convinced that there was no threat to his safety. "Or a Corsican cheese..."
She scowled at his slumbering form for a moment before getting out of bed, quite naked. She pulled a silk kimono-style robe around her gorgeous body and marched toward the door, sliding into slippers along the way. Her eyes glanced around, detecting no movement on the third floor.
As she glided quickly but gracefully down the stairs to the main floor while tying the knot on her robe, she began to hear voices from the main floor, and what sounded like confusion and exasperation. She emerged from the stairwell in the east wing and came out into the hallways. Valentina was standing at the end of the hallway and sensed movement. When she saw Karen, she squeaked in panic and bolted.
Undeterred by the skittish help, Karen strode into the grand foyer, where she found Tatyana, the seneschal of Blackwell Manor, along with Dave, the senior landscaper, looking out the open front doorway in bemusement. Tatyana made to say something, but stopped as Karen held up a single, silencing finger and marched by them, heading out the front doors. Tatyana and Dave stayed right where they were.
She stood at the top of the white marble stairs, staring stonily down at the three smoking, smudged figures who were approaching, walking rather unsteadily. Alexa was in the middle, with Freja and Jeanie on either side. They were covered head to foot in greasy black soot. Jeanie's kinky brown hair was flung out in all directions as if a cartoon bomb had gone off in her face.
"Don't... even...
think
of trying to enter my house in that condition," Karen warned before they reached the bottom step, her voice dire. The tone stopped them dead. "What unspeakable thing have you done?"
Jeanie's brown eyes tried to focus on the Blackwell family matriarch. She looked like a Mary Poppins chimney sweep.
"Boom..." was all she could say in a warbling voice.
Clearly Jeanie was no help, not that this was anything new. Karen looked at Alexa now, standing in the middle. She was swaying slightly, her sapphire eyes unfocused. She looked like she couldn't hear what Karen was saying, although it should have been fairly obvious, based on her older sister's body language and expression.
She made to speak, but then coughed, spitting out a clod of dirt and grass. She hacked and rasped, doubling over as she tried to clear the flora and detritus out of her lungs.
Karen looked over at Freja, hoping the third time was a charm. The Danish girl burped crudely, a puff of black smoke coming out of her mouth.
"We were... tryings one of my model rockets..." she began, hoping Karen could hear her over the sound of her little sister coughing up sod. "I ams making a new form of the fuel... it is very strong..."
"And where were you trying out this new weapon of mass destruction, might one inquire?" Karen asked. Were those sirens she heard from beyond the property?
Unsteadily, Freja turned and pointed at an area of the front lot where normally there was an abundance of carefully manicured grass, just recently free of winter snow. Now, it looked like a blast crater one would use in a movie about the Battle of the Somme. A hole in the ground was surrounded by almost three meters of scorched earth and very dead grass.
"Am I to understand..." Karen said quietly as she pinched her eyes. There were indeed fire truck sirens growing closer. She could smell cordite and rocket fuel now, and not just emanating from the three miscreant girls. "That you thought it might be fun to try out your experimental model rocket fuel on my front lawn? Before seven in the morning? On the day the Bishop is coming to interview my son and baby sister about their controversial marriage?"
None of the girls answered. Both 'yes' and 'no' seemed decidedly damning.
"What did you even expect to happen?" Karen demanded, now smelling various chemicals from the unexpected blast. She'd kept her pregnancy nose ever since having Alex almost nineteen years earlier, and what she smelled horrified her now.
Dear God in Heaven, is that cyclopentane?! No wonder my grass is dead!
"Any last words?" Karen asked them.
"Boom..." Jeanie repeated, still having not come back to herself, although with her, it was hard to tell.
"Miss Prospero," Karen called out, loud enough to be heard. There was a squeak from inside the grand foyer, and the short brunette girl came hurrying out, looking somewhat panicked. She was already in her work uniform, but had forgotten to take the kitty ears she habitually wore off her head.
