In the west, there was a passover town.
Every morning the sun came up and it would hit your nose—all baking bread and cinnamon, and wood stain, and roofing thatch. It was the homey sort of place—friendly and warm; your neighbour knew your birthday, and all your little un’s birthdays, and you knew the same about him and his.
People woke up to chase their fortunes. Down they went—endlessly down—into mines tinged with a deep emerald and a pale quartz. Folks used to trek in caked in black and come out bathed in night (because in those days, the coal was so deep you could still see the stars in it).
But nothing gold can stay—especially not gold.
The mines dried, so the town shattered and escaped in a million different directions; it became a million other towns with a million new names, and a million new stories.

Gold doesn’t stay, but memories do. Memories, like an old outhouse fading into the red dirt, or a water well half stoppered by grey moss, or the rotting silhouette of a forgotten saloon against a dark velvet sky.
No one is around to remember its name anymore (and its sign has long since eroded away), so Autumn christens it with all the whispers of her wind, the rustles of her leaves, the songs of her youngest storm-clouds.
Suppose you found this place, far removed from the grimy fingerprint of urban life; suppose you strode through its empty streets, kicking a rock down the dirt or whistling a tuneless lullaby. You might pass that nameless saloon—with its splintered batwing doors and its termite-ridden roof—and you might hear something: a waltz, or a nocturne, played more gently than touch can make, drifting through the places windows might’ve once sat.
Suppose you go inside. Suppose you’re quiet. Across a graveyard of old wood, you’d see a well dressed man—real proper, in his Sunday best—perched at an ancient player piano, performing for an audience of moonlight and thin air.

His name was Elliot, but now he’s only “pianist”.
He was a composer once, before he died, and now he’s a decomposer. Every evening he climbs up out of his coffin, picks out a few maggots like splinters, and gets to work at his piano.
He plays, and the music sweeps him up to show him all the things he’ll never see—waterfalls and noble balls, mountaintops and bell-towers. The piano is out of tune, but he’s used to it; he likes the warbling, hammer-tone voice it has—he plays, and it’s like a conversation between two old friends.
The itinerary is varied: it’s Chopin Ballades first, then Schumann’s sketches of the forest; afterward it’s Beethoven Sonatas, Brahms , then perhaps a spattering of Joplin or Gershwin.
Once he’s warmed up, he begins his own works—endless, wavering songs of grief, and being grieved. They’re cacophonies of undead harmony, and grimly elegant all the same. If you came across him now, you might have heard nothing at all.
Eventually, the moonshadow of the saloon’s broken grandfather clock reaches his feet, and Elliot stops to visit his folks.
Firstly, and most importantly, he pulls the piano cover back, exposing the friendly strings and shy hammers underneath. A nudge here, a pull there sets the disorder back in order. Neither of them will ever grow old.
Afterward, he heads down to the saloon’s basement, where his family rests; they’re a peculiar bunch, but no one’s around much to comment on that.
His wife is the most whole. She sits upright, spine propped against her old wooden rocking chair, covered in a thin layer of dust like new skin. Her eyes are filmy and glazed, quietly looking toward a place Elliot hopes to go. Her name was Delilah, before her sick came and washed it away.
Elliot smooths the skirts about her waist, smiling to himself as he does. When he’s done, he gently sets the rocking chair going.
His mother is the happiest of the bunch; she’s still been grinning since her skin flaked away, some two decades ago. She’s still got her Bible tucked under her left arm, and Elliot makes sure it stays there, day after day. Her name was Barbara, once. Now it’s Grief.
His father is a curious one. The old man is a newspaper article now, and nothing much more. TRAGIC:, his headline reads MINE ACCIDENT KILLS 3, MAIMS 10. Elliot gently blows his dust away.

Many of us who’ve seen Elliot wonder what he’s still doing there.
Every night he’s playing, skipping like a broken phonograph back to the same evening—moon wax, moon wane.
Why not follow his family? Why not be done with the creep of rot, the squirm of maggots beneath skin, and the malady of loneliness? Why suffer the sting of death without the release of its numb?
Well, to tell the truth, Elliot’s scared.
In that sleep what dreams may come? He fears the ear-breaking pressure of nothingness, or the roar of damnation behind his eyes, or the emptiness of a world without music. Who might say what beautiful, terrible things would await him? Only Delilah, or Barbara, or Friederich, and the flies have stolen away their tongues.
There is nothing left for him here in this dead town, caring for a family of memories, sleeping beneath an empty, heartless sky.
But he stays.
And he plays.
Night after night.
Eternity is an awful thing to carry. It’s the pain of watching the entire world fade away like old ink over flame, the hatred of the clock, and the sting of remembering.
But Elliot knows what he wants. He wants to be in his saloon, with his piano, whispering the names of his lost with every aching chord.

So he’s there, and he will be there, and he’ll probably be there forever. He sits, and he plays, and he offers up his grief to the wind, and the stars, and to all the nameless things.
He’s content knowing that he will never die.