The Prey and the Predator

“And forget again? No. I think not.”

Silence eloped them so long that time seemed to forget all meaning.
Then, his arms slipped tightly around her.
“Forgot?” he whispered in her ear.
Evoni’s eyes still didn’t divert from the key board. She tried, once again to remember how she used to close her eyes and play hard pieces of Chopin, Beethoven, and Mozart’s work. She lifted her hands slowly to the keys, but they haltered before they touched, and then she lowered her fingertips to their cool, marble feel. She closed her eyes and tried her best to remember. She strained and strained her mind to remember just one of the many symphonies that she had learnt.
But all that came was a measly simple scale.
“That is all I remember.” Her hands slipped from the keys. “From all the works I’ve learnt of Beethoven, Faure, Mozart, Prokofiev, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Rodrigo and Satie…that is all I remember.”
His arms tightened ever so slightly and she could hear the sadness in his breath as his head lay upon hers. (Her head fit under his chin easily- Evoni is a shortarse, like me. ^-^)

“I used to hate books.” She said suddenly, breaking another prolonged silence.
“What?” Alistair asked, this time he wasn’t able to conceal his shock as his question flew from him quickly.
Evoni? Hate books? How was that possible?
“Yeah…I used to hate them with a passion. Ironic, isn’t it? Since now they’re the only way I can live.” Evoni said. “I used to play. That would be how I would escape. Not by reading, or sleeping, but by playing the piano. And when I forgot…I was ready to die. At that time I was so…depressed. I couldn’t be happy…maybe it was because I was just young and selfish that I became upset, I don’t know.
“But because I played piano so much I…couldn’t read. I simply couldn’t. I could if I forced myself, but most of the time I would get the words wrong, and it would take me nearly an hour to finish a single page. But when…I lost my memory to play piano, all I could do was read. That became my new escape- and it still is now, to this day. I can now read a page within a minute; I can read and understand every word with ease. I’ve become a living dictionary. And now I love books…and hate the piano.”

He sat there, holding her. Holding her together.
Before, he thought he was doing something nice for her. Playing to her, getting her to play with him. But really, he was doing the worst thing he possibly could. She may have just said that she hated piano. But he knew that she loved it, beyond all things.
“Didn’t…didn’t your parents try to help you to remember?” Alistair asked.
Evoni laughed out loud. It made Alistair break; it was a cold, dark laugh that wasn’t like Evoni at all.
“My parents? Help? How can you even out those two words within the same sentence?” she laughed again. “At first I didn’t want to even learn the piano because I knew it would give my father an excuse to yell at me everyday because I didn’t play something right by his standards. But I proved him wrong. He learnt that there was no way he could yell at me when it came to the piano- because I DID get everything right.
“But when I lost my memory…God, it was like he was trying to get revenge. He yelled and yelled, screamed until his voice broke. And then…he laughed. He laughed at me and called me stupid and pathetic. Because, without the piano… I was nothing. I could hardly read anything than music- and even that I had forgotten.
“I wasn’t smart, I wasn’t special. All I really had going for me when I was younger was my music. And even my music was taken away, and it gave him every reason to tare me down and call me worthless. No, my father didn’t help me.”

She paused for a moment, and then continued.
“And as for my mother? I told you a while ago that she was ill, didn’t I? She still thinks I can play. She thinks that I’m perfect at everything I do. She still remembers me as the music prodigy that I used to be…If only I could remember myself that way too.”

“Evoni…” he murmured mournfully.
She didn’t answer.
“But…why don’t you live with your mother, if she thinks so high of you?” he asked her.
“Why?” Evoni laughed that cruel, harsh laugh again. “I may have said that she thinks that I am perfect at everything I do, but she hates me. She hates me to the very core of my being.”

He couldn’t possibly answer. How could he possibly answer!?
“I love life.” Evoni said. “Don’t ever think I am un-happy, Alistair. The only time when I was truly unhappy was when I forgot my piano skills, forgot my talent. But I have replaced that talent with many more. Since I forgot how to play the piano I turned my mind to other things. My intelligence developed extremely fast- like I was a child one moment and an adult the next. I became gifted at drawing, painting, nearly any type of art you could think. I taught myself how to sing well, to write books and poetry properly. I am happy. And because of you I have something truly meaningful to live for.”
She smiled and turned to look up at him, smiling cheerfully.
But his gaze back to her was unemotional, unreadable. It frightened him at how easily her mood changed.
“Alistair? What is it?” she asked, her voice that of her usual happy, childish self.
He didn’t answer for a moment.
“How…” he began. “How did you forget?”
She smiled up at him again. She was back to her true self- happy, childish. About 5% of Alistair was convinced that this side of Evoni was an act, that this happiness she felt towards everything was fake. But the other 95% of him was sure this happy child was the real Evoni.
And it was that 95% of him that was right.
“Alistair, please understand something. I care for you more than anything. I’d do anything you tell me, answer any question you want me too…Even though I may not want to.” Evoni said.
“And I’m guessing that this question that I’ve asked is one of those questions you don’t want to answer?”
She nodded, still smiling.
“But that’s alright. I’ll answer, for you.” She shifted out from his lap and kneeled beside him on the seat, looking up at him. “My mother and father lived together until I was 8. They were always fighting and they hated each other. My father would abuse mother and yell all the time at her and me. I remember him hitting her a couple of times and breaking her stuff. My stuff too, sometimes.
“Eventually he moved out of the house and I didn’t get to see him too much. My mind is exceptionally good at forgetting things I don’t like- like how father would hit me too, and insist it was punishment, even though nobody knew what I had done wrong. In the end, when my father moved out it was just Tom, mother and I. Father adored Tom, he never yelled, hit or hurt Tom.
“I think it was because Tom was his only son…But when Tom left to live with my father- Because my mother was too strange to live with- that was when it started. You see, my mother has epilepsy. She has episodes, seizures where she’s one person one moment, and a totally different person the next. I used to ignore her strange habits and shrug them off by playing the piano. I was 9 when Tom left, and it was then that she began doing things to me. I was 11 until I actually realized that what she was doing to me was wrong. She would hit me, abuse me. Scream at me and throw things at me. Dig her nails into my arm when I slept at night, throw glasses at me, and suddenly it hit me- what she was doing to me wasn’t…normal.”
“Normal?” Alistair choked. “You thought that the things she did to you were normal?”
“Well…yes.” Evoni said shrugging. “I was brought up with her and father doing that- of course I thought it was normal…anyway, eventually, at 11, I ran away. But whoever did I go to? You won’t believe who I ran away to.”
“Your father.” Alistair answered unemotionally.
“That’s right. I thought he would protect me. I thought he…would be my safe house. I had forgotten everything he had done to my mother and I. so I had no idea that he was going to treat me the same way he did my mother. My mother and father hate each other. My mother hates me because she hates my father. But that doesn’t mean that she wouldn’t use me to get to him.
“So a court case began for my custody, a series of tricks and traps were set up to make my father’s and my mother’s life hell- and I was the tool they used for those tricks. It was in that time, when I was 11, that I forgot everything I knew about the piano, that I forgot my very escape when I needed it the most.”
She paused for a long moment, and then continued.
“After 2 years of going through the courts and councilors my father won custody. And since then I’ve been living with him and Tom. And when I began living with him I began to remember how he had abused my mother when they were together. I used to think of my father as my hero, my protector.
“But then I remembered. And I realized that he was neither a hero nor a protector as he began to treat me the same way he had my mother. But there’s nothing I can do. I am not as weak as my mother as to give into my father’s torment by showing emotion and give him that pleasure. Instead I remain unaffected by his treatment. I refuse to let his abuse get a reaction out of me and I refuse to let his torment change who I am. Because I know one thing out of all of this; I never want to become an old, bitter and lonely person like him.”

“But I put up with him. And more than anything, I am grateful to him. Because…I owe him my life. He saved me from my mother- you see, if I had lived any longer with my mother I would have been killed…since she had already tried to kill me numerous times.”

And for Alistair, that was the breaking point.