Carnival

The masked woman placed the apple on the piano with deliberate care, as though it held the weight of something unspoken. The room, once familiar, began to shift—its edges blurred like a dream half-remembered. Her eyes, watching me through the mask, were pools of something older than recognition.

I began to play softly, the keys of the piano responding more to instinct than intention. “What’s with the apple?” I asked, though my voice seemed distant, as though carried on an unseen breeze. “Was I your teacher once, or maybe something else entirely?”

Her answer, though direct, felt like it came from somewhere far away. “Yes,” she whispered. “Don’t you remember?”

I didn’t. How could I? Time, like the music I played, was slipping away. The piano’s notes stretched and twisted, not quite the song I intended, more a reflection of a forgotten tune. She took out a switchblade, its metallic gleam somehow more real than anything else in the room, and cut the apple in two. The two halves rested on the piano lid, exposed to the air, their slow browning marking the passage of time in a way that clocks never could.

“It’s Carnival,” she said, though her voice was barely audible above the swelling noise of the bar. A crowd of faces—none familiar—entered the room, their laughter mixing with the sound of my piano, turning the melody into something more like a carnival’s calliope.

I tried to keep playing, but my hands felt disconnected, like they were moving to someone else’s rhythm. The masked woman began to sing, her voice rising above the din, but her song wasn’t for the revelers. It was for me, a song I had forgotten long ago.

She sang of past lives and promises unkept, of memories buried beneath the weight of years. Her eyes held mine, and for a moment, I saw through the mask—not a face, but a reflection of my own uncertainty, my own search for something unnamed.

I wanted to ask her more, but the words stuck in my throat, trapped by the weight of everything left unsaid. The revelers grew louder, their cacophony rising as she stood, turning to leave. The apple halves remained on the piano, browning, softening, as the last notes of my song faded into the dreamscape that had become my reality.

And then she was gone. Only the apple remained—its slow decay a reminder of the impermanence that had always been there, waiting just out of sight.

I stared at it, and for the first time, understood.