"Thank you for letting me write your story, Mr Knight. I understand you haven't spoken to any journalists since ... the incident."

Karim Knight, the tall intimidating young gentleman in front of me, stared at me as if answering my question was beneath him. With his hand splayed over the couch he gave me a brief patronising smile.

"Pardon my asking but...what changed?" 

"I read the paper," he answered, lazily crossing his left leg over his right one.  He pulled the action with an air of superiority not necessary for the task despite it befitting him to a T. The man before me, adequately dubbed ‘the siren’ by media outlets since he was 18, resembled an aristocratic poise and all. And with every action he took, he effortlessly signed his name in the movements of his body.  

 His blood red gown (a large contrast to the white pristine couch he was perched on) fell open revealing a fit, sculpted, bronze chest that showcased all his Middle Eastern roots. And with equally lazy movements, Mr Knight flippantly flipped it closed. Instead of covering himself up or maintaining some semblance of decency, his action served to draw in his audience, a move that seemed so unique to him because when it came to Karim Knight everyone was his audience. 

I stopped taking notes, long enough to glance at the paper on his table. The newspaper was old and yet despite it being seven years old it sat there pristine, preserved in time like it had been printed that morning. On the front cover was the infamous story that had granted me access to Mr Knight's presence. The old, large, impressive historian building that once was Bradford's School Of Arts stood in all its haunting, majestic excellence. Covering most of the page and haunting whoever picked up the paper but what caught my eye was not the infrastructure but the accompanying headline. 

The headline was but a single question. A question everyone, including myself had asked at least once after the school shut its gates and caged its remaining students. A question no one but the people present on that island during ‘the incident’ could answer. A question I thought about most nights as I lay awake in bed. 

Mr Knight's midnight black, wavy curls fell over his left eye as he shifted in his seat. His silk robe fell open again, exposing his toned abdomen muscles and the man before me smiled. If I didn't know better I would have called it provocative but for someone like him, it was nothing more than a lifestyle. 

His fair, bronze coloured skin glistened in the moonlight as he poised his body on the couch like a Calvin Klein model. That's the thing about Karim Knight he is and always was the centre of attention, drawing his audience in so that they may drink him in like he was sweet forbidden nectar. Even on September 17, he had been no different then.  

I had watched through my small grainy television as the reporters swarmed him. Despite the hoards of people flocking around him disappointedly, he had walked out of that place with his head held high and his shoulders straight. As if he were a king or better yet a runway model during fashion week. Despite the chaos and noise surrounding him that day my eyes had remained trained on the man. 

"So, you don't agree with what the papers are saying?" I asked, settling into the couch opposite his.

"Noone ever gets it right, " He paused, spreading his arms wide open, on the back of the couch. Settling in so he could peer down at me as if we weren't sitting at eye level, "They don't know enough about what happened. They weren't there and yet they made conclusions like they were. They pretend to understand when the truth is they know not what they speak off and everyone has forgotten. Rather noone truly knows what the real story is about." He said looking at me with eyes that seemed to have aged since I walked in. 

"And what is the story about?" 

"The story is about a tangled knot," Silence seeped in as Mr Knight watched me, eyes boring into mine and with yet another sardonic smile, "A knot of lust and affection. Not the events everyone is making it about." Mr Knight said, absent mindedly stroking his abdomen through the open V of his silk robe. 

"You don't think the terrible proceedings are what the story is about?" I asked, staring at the man before me. 

"You can not have one without the other. Love and lust will always lead to distraction, especially when they are in each other's presence and when they implode, they burn bright, fast and passionately. So passionately that everyone forgets the amount of damage they are capable of."

"So you are blaming everything on Love and Lust? Doesn't that make you the villain of this story?"

"What is a villain if not a hero misunderstood. Surely you can't believe that I am the villain, especially when you don't know my story?" 

"Okay then Mr Knight. Tell me what happened at Bradford? Help me understand." 

I watched him unwind his body with short sinuous movements as if the mention of Bradford made him preen and uncurl like a peacock drawing in a mate. Just the thought of that school brought colour back into his cheeks as he smiled devilishly at whatever memory he had just remembered. 

"Please, call me Karim. Mr Knight is my father and as you already know, he and I don't get along."

I nodded silently. Hoping he would take that as my acknowledgement.

He continued, eyes trained somewhere behind me, "Everything changed when the preacher's kid arrived. He changed everything, He changed us all one way or another. Noone was the same after that day. In fact, if it wasn't for him we would have all gone along with our lives never knowing what else it could be."  

"And what else could it be?" 

"Fleeting." He answered smiling widely as if that word alone could answer my question. 

The thing about Bradford was, the rules of the world didn't apply to Bradford. Bradford School of Arts existed on an island strictly built for its students. The city there, the school itself even the residents of the island where all there for the benefit of the school. Thus it had its own system and its own rules, which explained why the students at Bradford ranged from 16 year-olds to 26 year olds and that didn't mean anything in terms of educational level. But it meant something at Bradford which was another reason why no one seemed to turn 27 at Bradford. To turn 27 while getting an education at Bradford was a taboo. It meant the school had failed to make an artist out of you. You might as well be expelled if that is to happen, for Bradford students 27 was the expiry date of an artist. 

Karim flicked his long silk robe over his leg revealing more than was deemed appropriate in the presence of an audience. But as I already mentioned Karim was not like other people. I had heard all about him and his promiscuity so this was just one of those things I had come mentally prepared for. 

"Like I said before, everything that took place began with the preachers kid. He was the first domino. When he showed up, he was pure, clean and utterly corruptible. The golden student of Bradford's School of Arts. The only student who had never auditioned to enter and probably the last. He was a real Prodigy,  when his fingers touched the piano keys it was like a symphony of emotions poured out of him. He called to the angels and silenced demons with just his fingertips. But then again when you mix angels and obsession what comes out is usually a nuclear reaction." 

Karim took a sip of the amber liquid that rocked gently at the bottom of his glass. "The preacher's kid was the epicentre of the collapse of Bradford." 

He stood up and walked over to an old, shiney record player, a record player that would have been called old fashioned in my house but in Karim's house it probably went by ‘Vintage’ because thats how it was for the rich and talented. Karim bent over the record player and pulled out a record from the drawer under it. His fingers carassed the black disk gently like it held the fondest memories, then with a small private smile he placed the circular disk onto the box under the needle. 

"Preacher's kid was talented. And it made sense you know..." Karim spoke to the record player, voice fond and distant dispite him being a few centimetres away from me.

"What made sense?" 

"That he played like an angel." Karim whispered, he said it like it was the most obvious thing, "Wether it was some devine blessing from above or it was in his genes I don't know. All I know is when his fingers touched the piano keys he transported you into a place you couldn't even dream of. A place only his fingers and your wildest dreams could conjure."

A soft, sad piano sound drifting from the record player, filling the room with melancholic tension that seeped through my pores into my skin. The sound sunk into my bones and gently wrapped its fingers around my heart until tears streamed down my cheeks without my permission. 

"You see. Preacher's kid had a way with music. He could bring down a ruthless African dictator with the press of a key." Karim sunk back into the couch and inhaled the sound like a drug addict chasing a high, "He was miraculous, among other things." 

I tried to glance at my notes but my vision was bleary and tears wouldn't stop pouring out of my eyes. The sound made me feel sad, as if the artist was in torment and they wanted everyone to feel it. 

"Love, Obsession and Pain are three of the most interwoven emotions but I don't think Preacher's kid knew that before he came to Bradford."

"Just so I get this clearly the preacher's kid was ..."

"Jedediah. Jedediah Woods."