Stories From the Strings (Short Fiction)

A collection of short-short stories born from a few minutes of string-plucking. 

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 Jane was picking at a faded scar on her right pinky. Her eyes remained constant. “The notes sound different lately.” 

“How so?” asked the woman across from her. A dixie cup with a stir-stick sat abject on the table between them. 

“Does it matter?” 

“It’s a conversation, Janey. Questions are meant to be asked.” 

“It’s probing.” Jane stopped, her hands still. “They sound… full.” 

The woman inhales, slowly. Awaiting.

Jane exhales, annoyed. 

“What does full sound like?” The dixie cup is reached for, but again, abandoned. There’s only a sip left, anyway.

Jane’s moved on to the tattered table wrap, picking at its soft cotton underbelly. “It sounds like him. And her. It sounds like Friday nights and Sunday mornings. It sounds like laughter, but in stereo.” Jane tears through the thin membrane of the table wrap, another hole in the broken canvas. “It sounds like sorrow in mono.” 

“Do they feel different? The notes, I mean.” The woman tilts her head, searching for eyes that will not meet hers. 

“It mostly feels like before they left. But not quite.” Jane snatches the stir-stick, twirling it slowly between her fingers. A breath shudders in as her bottom lip trembles. 

“It sounds better than before.” 

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There’s dust beneath the strings, resting upon the frets. The metal strands are frayed, threads jutting out at every angle. The sound is strangled and nothing like the music he used to play. Strumming without purpose sounded better in his purposeful hands. The violence and anger surrounding held at by the soft timbre of my grandfather’s music. 

He never officially gave me the guitar. He told me the story of where it came from, once, but I’ve forgotten. Maybe I was impatient, too young to take heed of the moment he was trying to share. 

There’s chips on the fringes of the body. The deep black reflects and erases. The strap hangs on by a few faded strands. The chromatic knobs have long lost their lustre. 

I can make sounds, and I can imitate. But the guitar is despondent to my touch. The soul of the instrument is lurking within, waiting to be plucked from the its slumber. Despite my best efforts, it knows that I’m not the one to awaken it again. 

The heart of the guitar waits a visitor who can no longer visit. It waits for the comfort of an old friend. 

I wait for the faded sound of strings and kin.