ellectrical | seldom seen kid

Etude in Ab Major P. 25 No. 1. Frederic Chopin.

Unlike her father's book shelves, which she had frequently raided and could even recall on occasion, Elle never touched his music, or cassettes, or the large records still meant for his antique gramophone. She might break them (as her father had told her) and she couldn't understand them (as her father never taught her). There is no way she could know that this piece, set as a cello solo, is tightly sewn into the memories she has of her father.

The mind tends to fill in blanks without any prompting. Details and circumstances can be imagined even if they are not really remembered. Even after learning of what had been taken from her, Elle hadn't understood the true extent, because her mind had filled in what blanks it could, when it could.

Elle is small. Smaller. Her hair is cut short. She's lying on the sofa in her father's office, head resting on a throw pillow.

There is nothing filled in for her here. She doesn't know how old she is – maybe eight or nine or ten, if she's this small and her hair is short. She tries to look down at what she's wearing, but can't make her eyes move or her head tilt enough to see it. If she doesn't remember it, it's just not there.

Most of the room is in detail – the desk, though those objects were different – there's a golden Rubik's cube, an older computer, an open set of file folders. The lamps are lit, giving the room a pale amber glow that Elle didn't see too often. The pillows on the sofa are different; she'd burnt one of them, and the other had been stained when someone else lost control. It was a lot of clean up.

Her father isn't working. She remembers everything about him – he had more of his mousy brown hair, though it was very thin at the top. His glasses were round, he was wearing a gray pinstriped suit and a dark blue tie. Gold cufflinks at his wrists. But most importantly, he wasn't working. He'd set a wood chair in the center of the office, tilted his cello against his knee, and played. Etude in Ab Major P. 25 No.1. Frederic Chopin.

Now, it's as dim as any record he'd put on the old gramophone. Elle better remembers the rain – there was no lightning, but the clouds were dark enough that it could have been night, rather than mid-afternoon. The rain pattered against the large, mullioned windows behind his desk. It's louder than anything. But the music wasn't so important. He played his cello – one part of a world to which Elle had only sparse access. He'd thought she was well enough to share this one piece of it with her.

He's playing it for her.

On her ninth birthday, he'd entered her cell. She remembers the glass walls, the simple cot, her plain white pajamas.

(She'd had ones with pink hearts on them when she was – before –
- it was stupid, anyway.)

She couldn't move. Elle also remembers the IV in her arm.

He'd put his hand on her head, and moved it over her hair. They didn't normally do things like that.

He gave her two hours before leaving, and locking the door once more.

Elle turns over on the sofa. The sound of the cello grows louder for a moment. She remembers that she'd thought about copying his movements with her hands.

She doesn't.

When she was six years and two months old, Elle lost her first baby tooth. She can't remember how she'd imagined the tooth fairy her mother had described, but the promised coin was under her pillow the next morning, making the blood and confusion worth it, more for the imagined visit than the quarter.

Seven months later, Elle's mother was dead, and her father told her that people who could do what they could didn't need things like tooth fairies or Santa Claus. When her teeth came out, Elle did the sensible thing, and threw them away.

It's near the end of the piece now. What she didn't do at the time was feel the apprehension of its conclusion. Or she doesn't remember feeling it.

But now she does; she doesn't want it to stop, wishes he could keep playing.

It's harder when you know how it ends.

They had to go to Cincinnati.

There was a man there. He was supposed to answer.

maybe there's more to you than the whole sadistic lightning thing

But he didn't.

sociopath with paranoid delusions

And he was screaming.

because I threatened to kill them

Until he stopped.

do you really think it would've been the first time

And there was the electrical closet. And the two scorched corpses in the hall.

caused a blackout in four counties in Ohio

And that's all there is. Nothing but blanks that her mind can't fill in.

You were a normal girl.

they never made me kill–

Her father has stopped playing.

The little girl sits up, as abruptly as though she had startled awake from a dream. She looks at the simple white ceiling, and then to her father. He watches her silently behind his old, round glasses, waiting for her to speak.

"You're hurting me," Elle tells him.

He nods, once.

"I know."