Sitting there, she gazed with glazed eyes out of the dark, two-inch thick bulletproof window at the dappled sunlight, trying to remember what the sun felt like on skin. She stared for quite a while; staying in a room with nothing new to do for years at a time had made it quite easy to be amused by the smallest things. Ignoring the familiar, white padded walls that had entertained her for so long by their durability, she began checking her clothing for anything, even a piece of lint, to fiddle with. Her pale fingers threaded through her many pockets, weaving between countless loose threads, and, to her surprise, actually hit something.

She sat there in stunned silence for a few seconds before removing the unknown object from its home. Turning it over in her hands, she inspected the sleek, streamlined item that shone with a glossy wood finish in the dull light forcing its way in from the window. Intrigued, she flicked it in her hand, showing the pocketknife’s blade. Her eyes shone as she saw that the metal was of a high quality, shimmering a grey-blue in the faint light, unblemished by bloodstains and scratches and sharpened to a razor-point.

Curious, she gripped the handle and scratched the blade against her fingernail, producing a sound similar to fingernails on a chalkboard—not that she knew what that sounded like. Her eyes wide, she repeated the motion, savoring the new sound and saving it into her deprived memories. The tenth time she frowned as her fingernail gave way and the blade met blood for the first time. She inspected the bleeding appendage and touched it, sending another wave of pain through her hand. Tentatively she pressed the now reddish metal to the flesh she had just uncovered, but, instead of focusing on the pain she was feeling, she focused on her ears. Instantly she could hear every vein breaking under the pressure of the metal and the flesh easily peeling away from the blade.

Smiling slightly at this new discovery, she removed the knife and placed it at her wrist this time. Applying pressure, she again enjoyed the range of sounds the instrument produced, but suddenly the notes stopped. Frowning at the end of the noise, she looked down at her bloody wrist and peered into the wound, or at least what she could see of it around the bloody blade. The frown was immediately replaced by a smile: She had found a new source of a new sound. Using a bit more force, she was instantaneously granted a grating sound that resounded through her entire body.

Shivering at how the reverberations shook her to the core, she hooked the knife under a tendon and gently began pushing it up. When she let go, she was bestowed upon her a twanging sound, like a tightly wound guitar string being picked. Curiosity overwhelming her, she left a few of the cords of tissue as they were but relentlessly dug through the others, shivering every time one grated through her marrow. Soon she could see bigger veins, which she tried to ignore, but she just had to hear the sounds of the vital fluid of life rushing out of the plump, previously intact blood vessels.

She soon caught flashes of white and started digging with a new vigor. Once she had uncovered the origin of the strange whiteness in her wrist, she gazed in awe at the sight of the perfect white that stood out against her blood as if it were emanating a pure, bright light. Once again she placed the knife against the new surface and could actually feel the reverberation through her bones as she listened to the screech that one of their kind produced. Smiling, she began using her wrist and blade to make melodies: her wrist as the strings and her knife as the bow.

Abruptly her song was cut short as beeping sounds started to invade from outside of the room. Scowling at whatever cut her tune short, she began pressing harder on the blade, making every sound from her wrist stand out. The door began to swing ominously open, and two people in white were revealed. Once they caught sight of her, they were paralyzed on the spot, staring in horror at the sight of a young girl smiling in the middle of a puddle of blood, her pale features almost a perfect camouflage against the white walls of the room. She looked up at them, black crawling slowly into her vision, acting as a border for all she could see, and smiled blankly in greeting. She raised her hand, facing the mutilated wrist toward the visitors, and waved happily, blood running down her arm in rivers. Her smile not lessening a millimeter, her wrist fell down to her side, and the pocketknife fell out of her numb, cold fingers...

She had played the final melody: the Melody of Death.