Tales of an old man.

[Molly]

{ooc}
I know I haven't interviewed/posted a profile, but I wanted to get ahead with the roleplaying. I tried to make it extra long as compensation.

An old man staggered into the classroom, wheezing horribly. He leaned against the wall, taking in deep breaths. He looked beaten and tired and worn - funny, he was. He'd run all the way down to the post office outside the school, merely to find a letter telling him one of his friends was dead. Cheery, eh?

It wasn't a surprise. Many of his friends had, recently, "passed away". He snorted. He didn't believe in using soft language for things like that; putting sugar on a pill, it was. He could understand it, but he still thought it pathetic. Adrien had died, that was all. Not "passed away", not "departed this world"... died.

He supposed it would be him, soon. But who would post the letter stating that he was dead, now Andrée was, too? He felt a momentary dizziness, as he always did at the thought of his wife's death. It was so easy to... not forget completely, but to forget the little things. Every time he woke up he almost expected her to call him, to bring down the cup of tea they drank in the mornings. She'd sip, reading some magazine and muttering about how awful soandso's new dress was... he'd sit on the other side of the bed, peering at the crossword through his spectacles.

It was odd, perhaps, for a man of eighty-eight to be working in a boarding school. But he was perfectly sound mentally; and the school could hardly afford to lose staff at the minute, now people were loathe to come here because of the ghosts.

And there were ghosts, no doubt about it. He'd heard them; he'd even, occasionally, seen them. Adélaïde either didn't believe in them or pretended she didn't - he, on the other hand, was perfectly happy with him. They delighted him - they were so astounding. Perfectly impossible, of course. That made him happy above everyone else - all those "We know everything" types in the white coats were completely wrong.

After Andrée's death, he'd hoped and prayed that she, too, would come back. But she hadn't. He wondered, sometimes, if she'd been given the chance and had refused. He couldn't believe she'd do that - surely she'd love immortality? And when he died, he could join her...

But then again, if everyone who died had the option to stay, surely the world would be absolutely stuffed with ghosts.

The man stopped, shook his head. He thought about it too much. He was obsessive about the world of ghosts, but now was not the time. In a few minutes, he had to teach. He walked over to the grand piano that sat proudly at the front of the classroom, towering over the cracked, navy seats, the ink-stained desks. This, at least, was true bliss. Sometimes he thought he couldn't possibly live without music.

He propped the sheet up, scanned it. He'd been playing for so long that he could hear the tune in his head as he read it, despite the fact he hadn't played it many times before. Piano playing was his passion; he prided himself on being one of the best in the country. When he was younger, he'd performed properly, at concerts and such. Now, the only concert he would get a place in would be the school one; and no doubt he'd be preceded by some child playing a recorder.

His finger pressed down on a random key, and he listened to the note, a serene smile spreading across his face. Closing his eyes, he began to play, his entire body moving rather than just his hands.

There should be just time to go through it once before the lesson began.

[Shawna]

Shayanna seriously didn't like music. When he was little, his mother was living with a guy who insisted that they keep an old jukebox in their home. At first shayanna was okay with this, but after a couple of weeks the jukebox started to become a nuisance, turning itself on at all hours (mostly at night) and waking him up.

At first he thought it was a singing monster. He would lay awake for hours, afraid it would come upstairs and eat him or something. Eventually he gathered up the courage to go downstairs, eager to tell it how to sing. When he realized what it really was, he just chuckled at his own embarassment and turned it off.

Eventually it started turning itself back on. He didn't know how his mother and her boyfriend could have slept through the noise, but apparently they did.

Eventually he thought up the brilliant idea of unplugging the machine, but right after everyone was in bed, it somehow started to play. Thankfully his mother was still awake and heard it. Soon after it was gone.

--

Shayanna found himself standing inside the classroom, listening to the music play and wishing it would stop. It reminded him of the jukebox, and he just couldn't stand it.

"Excuse me! What class is this?"