Prologue

            The teller leaned back slightly so she could see exactly what she expected: a middle-aged man in the back office, crying softly into his sleeve as the bank managers tough hands attempted some reassuring pats on the man’s back.  When the door opened and the bank manager walked out, she hurriedly began shuffling through the papers sitting in front of her, making brief eye contact with the manager as he hurriedly walked past, giving her a sly smile and a wink.  She blushed, feeling the heat rising against her cheeks.  In the back office, the man continued to sob quietly.

            It was nearly ten minutes later when the man came out of the back office, eyes still red and his cheeks still stained with the tears of despair.  He made no eye contact with any of the tellers or customers, giving only a cursory nod to the security guard standing by the front door, who swung the doors outward.  Inside, the bank remained unchanged, its customers standing in a close line waiting in front of the counter, statements and signed slips of paper clenched in their hands.

            Outside, amongst the heat radiating from the blacktop, adding to the muggy nature of the day, the middle-aged man, his brow streaked with sweat, sat inside a small sedan.  There was no noise coming from within the car; the man sat, staring blankly forward, still perspiring in the oppressive heat inside of his smallish car.  It was a full five minutes before he turned the engine on, and let the fog of cold air radiate out of the vents.  He sat in the car, the engine running, as the tears began to well up in his eyes again.  He gave himself enough time to regain his composure, before backing the car out across the hot blacktop.  The traffic was heavy; it neared the end of the workday and the streets were filled with commuters running errands and returning to their homes.  After waiting at a red light for what felt like an eternity, the middle-aged man drove his car into the blended flow of commuters.

            The subdivision lacked gates; that variety was across the expansive commercial area that had grown seemingly overnight.  Those were the more prestigious houses: the lawyers, doctors, and the like, growing tired of the constant headache of urban life, flocking into the suburbs, but deciding to segregate themselves from the original inhabitants.  The subdivisions without gates were the heraldry of the middle class; the man, like many of his neighbors, had moved his family to this subdivision a decade ago seeking a safer environment.  He paused once inside the subdivision proper, seeing a newly sold house sitting at the top of the main road towards his own home.  He had passed by it daily, but now just noticed how much it had changed since he last remembered it.  There was a new, vibrant coat of paint drawn across the front; he had remembered a drab yellow, now a soothing light blue accented by white trim across the doors and windows.  There was a white wooden fence across the front, where he had never remembered a fence before.  His car sat next to the curb, and he stared in wonder at the house, drawn into its own nature.  Two small children, a boy and a girl, ran behind the fence while their mother watched from the front steps.  He sighed, and a smile crept across his face, until he continued driving home.

            A yellow sheet of paper was stuck on the door of the house next door.  The man didn’t need to stop to read what it meant, taking stock of the unkempt yard and broken windows, courtesy of the neighborhood children.  The subdivision was a boomtown a few years ago, now, quickly becoming a ghost town.  It was not the first yellow tag the man saw, and he knew, deep down in the pit of his stomach that it wouldn’t be the last.  He drove on, focusing on the road, and not on the houses around him, the tears welling up in his eyes again.

            He pulled slowly into his driveway, killing the engine and sitting motionless for a few minutes before walking out onto the pavement.  He could faintly smell his wife beginning to cook dinner, and from behind the house, the faint laughter of his children playing.  As he approached the house, he screwed his face into a caricature of happiness: his frown twisted up to a smile, betrayed by the look in his eyes.  Before he could even open the door himself, his wife came out, and greeted him; he initial enthusiasm faded when she saw the look in his eyes, and took his hands and led him in.

            Across the street, the only other person visible was sitting on the top step leading up to a modest home.  In his early 20s, the young man stared across the street at the sight of the man and his wife talking in the window of their living room.  He took a sip of coffee out of the mug sitting next to him before leaning his back against the top of the stairs.  He stared up at the clouds as they began to turn orange in the evening sky.  Across the street, the sound of crying could be heard.

The Violinist Part 3 (Final Part)

Finished this Saturday, didn't turn out quite what I expected, but I'm still pleased with it over all.

The sun began to sink low in the sky and Arthur still sat in the bedroom browsing through the cracked leather photo album.  He sat in silence, making no real sound except his slow, rhythmic breathing as he carefully looked at picture after picture.  His gaze hovered over each old photograph for a few minutes, occasionally running his fingers across each photograph.  He set the album gingerly on a chair, and reached for his instrument.  Sad, yet beautiful, the notes echoed through the room.  Outside, Mrs. Washington walked down the street, and heard the music.  She smiled and began walking up the steps to the house, reaching her hand out towards the worn, brass doorknob.  She hesitated and then stopped completely.  Her aged face frowned, the wrinkles on her dark skin becoming more pronounced as she heard the music clearly from the house.  She heard the sobs in between the violin music, and turned back down the steps towards the sidewalk, giving the house one last forlorn glance before walking further down the street.  Inside the house, Arthur stopped playing, taking the rosin and rubbing it aggressively across the bow, before setting in on top of the photo album.  Underneath it, a yellowed photograph showed the same boy with the hawkish nose and the short chin, holding up a birthday cake with a wide grin.  A tight, loopy handwriting in the corner of the photograph read “Arthur, age 10.”  Outside, the wind began to pick up erratically, and a light rain began to fall.

It was after midnight when the loud droning of the alarms began to sound around the city.  The light rain had given way to a torrent, the sky roared and flashed as the wind began to howl through the buildings.  Inside the tenement buildings, the panicked residents began to hole up in the bathrooms and basements, listening to half-used radios as weather reports poured in.  “Tornado,” was what the robotic, buzzing voice said.  The residents stayed quiet, families huddled together.  The undesired criminals braved the adverse weather, foolishly seeking material wealth in the treacherous weather.  The storm ripped its way through the city, towards the tenements of the back corner.

Arthur woke to the house heaving and shaking in the wind.  He tried desperately to turn on a light, but there was no power.  The distinct lack of light caused him to fumble in the dark, searching for any source of light.  He crashed through the hallway, causing the feral cat to yowl and run out of its hiding place in a discarded cardboard box.  He stumbled into the kitchen, and grabbed the box of matches left sitting on the counter from his meager dinner.  He struck one, holding it aloft, looking for something to light with it, before finding an old candle on top of the refrigerator.  He lit it, and began to run back towards the bedroom.  The house shook violently in the heavy wind; boards creaked and shingles began to fly off the roof in droves.  Arthur grabbed the violin case and took off towards the back of the house.  He stopped, staring at the door in front of him; the only thing separating him from the outside, the splintered, old wood with the same brass doorknob as in the front door but lacking the wear.  Arthur began breathing heavier than he already was: the frantic gasp of breath left him dizzy and disoriented, faintly hearing the roar of the wind as it tore through the upstairs.  The ancient wood, ill kept, began to splinter at the relentless onslaught.  It started in his sanctuary, as the last unbroken pane of glass buckled inward and left shards of glass streaming through the small room.  The sound of splintering wood echoed through the house, followed by the crash of debris.  Outside, the roof buckled and tore off the rest of the house.  It crashed against the neighboring building, raining a torrent of debris down on the side alleyway.  Arthur stood, paralyzed, staring at the door, as the entire house fell down on top of him.

Mrs. Washington stood with her grandson staring at the remains of the large house.  The police had strung caution tape across the lot, yet minimal removal had occurred.  There were no intact items left, merely the pile of debris; anything of value had been removed by the residents of the tenements.  Mrs. Washington bent over and pulled a faded scrap of a photograph from in front of her.  She studied it before tossing it away realizing that the image was impossible to see.  Her Grandson bent under the tape, and started stirring a pile of dust with his hand: “Grandma, what happened to the man that lived here?”

Mrs. Washington sighed, surveying the debris-strewn lot, before calmly stating, “I don’t know, baby.”

“I heard him play his music.  I liked it.”

The elderly woman sat on the remains of a wooden box, her face creasing intensely as tears grew in the corner of her eyes.  She hastily wiped them away before turning to the boy, still playing in the dust: “Me too. The music was so beautiful.”

“How come he didn’t come outside? I didn’t meet him.”

“He was scared. You see, his parents died when he was young, and he was too scared to go outside.  He just sat in his house and played his music.”

“His parents died? Like Mommy and Daddy, Grandma?”

“Yeah, baby. Just like them.”

“I wish I woulda met him.  There’s nothing scary out here.” The boy looked back at Mrs. Washington, and she motioned him back to the building next door.  As he dropped the pile of dust back on the ground, he examined the small, rectangular object half-buried in it.  It was the rosin.  He hastily put the treasure in his pocket before hurrying back to where his grandmother was waiting for him.

That night, anyone who could avoid the usually cacophony of noise from the city, more erratic and deafening that usual due to the extra commotion from the massive storm, would not hear the usual violin music slowly drifting through.  There was no distinct, mournful music.  Mrs. Washington sat next to her window, and with a distinct sense of yearning, looked out over the city as her grandson slept in the cot next to her.  She didn’t notice the shadows moving strangely along the wall of the alley below her.  A dumpster sat, slightly removed from the back wall of the alley.   The streetlight showed a man’s shadow cast across the concrete wall of the building.  Arthur sat behind the dumpster, battered and covered in dried blood and dirt of decades of home neglect.  He cradled his head in his arms, humming quietly.  He raised the tone, louder, yet unheard, masked by the noise of the city around him.  Abruptly, he raised his arms, aloft, and struck an imaginary bow across an imaginary violin.

The Violinist Part 2

Damn, I am on a roll here.  Hoping to get this finished up pretty soon, have another idea for another short story rolling around in my brain.  Have to say, writing from a limited third person perspective is fairly invigorating.  Makes me think a little clearer about what's going on, without worrying so much about what is going on in a character's head.  And yes, Kbbuddingwriter, I do rewrite, usually as I go, but I save everything for another look in the future.  Most of the stuff I post gets a read-through before it gets posted.

It was late when Arthur sprung from his chair, screaming with panic.  He threw the book on the floor, and groped behind the dirty mattress in a frenzied panic before pulling a rectangular case out from the nest of blankets.  Inside, the immaculately clean violin greeted Arthur, and his face, frozen in horror only moments before, broke into a childlike semblance of joy.  Carefully, he picked the instrument up and held it in his arm, chin to the chinrest, and plucked the G string intently, listening, while reaching for the horse-hair bow still concealed in the case.  He dragged the bow deliberately across the neck, heavy enough to be off-putting, but delicate enough so that Arthur could clearly hear each note.  He fiddled with the pegs and repeated the delicate process, before sawing the bow back and forth, slowly at first, but growing in a crescendo as the notes became less garbled and more deliberate.  His arm arced high, before driving across the neck with a fury of passion, throwing notes that reverberated across the small room, and began to be heard outside.  In the building next door, Mrs. Washington sat in her living room, with the window open to allow the cool air to circulate through the cramped apartment.  While her grandson slept on the small cot in the corner, she closed her eyes and heard Arthur’s frantic notes reaching their apex, before falling into a soft movement and ending abruptly.

The sun reached its zenith before Arthur woke from the dirty mattress, still clutching the violin case between his hands, the violin still safely tucked inside.  He blinked slowly against the dimly lighted room, the bars of sunlight filtering in through cracks in the boards that covered the windows in his bedroom.  He cautiously walked toward the bathroom, making no notice of the streak of grey that shot up the ruined stairs, as the cat paused and hissed.  Arthur entered the mildew-strewn shower, slipping momentarily on the living film that covered the bottom.  Fiddling with the knobs, he stopped as the rusty water sprayed haphazardly down on him before it cleared slightly, looking pinkish in the light of the bare 60 watt bulb hanging from the poorly painted ceiling.

There was one window in the entire house that had not been boarded up and still held the original panes of glass in it.  Arthur trudged through a room strewn with newspapers, circumventing a pile of broken glass under the hastily boarded window.  A rock lay in the rubble, evidence of juvenile delinquency, but without any retribution or care on the individual living inside the decrepit house.  He paid it no attention, opening a door toward the back and revealing a small staircase leading up into the higher levels.  It creaked heavily as he ascended the steps, but held together.  At the top, Arthur pulled a hatch, and a ladder swung down, leading to a well-concealed attic.  Inside, was a sanctuary; Arthur sat on a stool facing the last intact window, staring at the world below him.  The entire time, he never let go of the violin case.

Arthur looked out the window at the noisy city, clutching his violin case in his arms.  He began whispering in a panicked tone, muttering barely audible above the ambient noise of cars driving along the street and the lonely, desperate people walking down the street.  “Ugly,” he said, his voice rising in his throat, guttural; “too loud.”  He opened the case still cradled in his arms, and withdrew the instrument and drew the bow in a slow, mournful arc across it.  He began playing slow but intense, as the sound emanated out the window and down onto the street.  A little boy stopped and looked toward the house, curious as to what he was hearing.

The dirge finished, and Arthur replaced the violin in its case.  He stood up from the stool, pausing in front of a bookshelf.  Instead of books, it was filled with photo albums.  He stared intently, reading the fading spines that read “Summer” or “Happy Memories.”  He pulled one, it’s cracking, brown leather not bearing any words on it.  He tucked it under his arm, and descended the ladder.  Outside, a bird landed on the windowsill and began to sing quietly, echoing the notes that just ended.  When the hatch slammed shut, it startled and flew off.

The Violinist (part 1)

Just a short story I've been working on for the past few days.  Trying my hand at a more limited 3rd person narrative than usual and my first attempt at utilizing the concept of Absurdism after reading me some Albert Camus.  Let me know what you think.

Past the crumbling tenements, against the back corner of the city, the music could be heard drifting through the near deserted streets, echoing across the cracked concrete.  During the day, it cannot be heard, but the residents know it’s there, and every night when the shouting of neighbors dies and the soft cries of infants begin to echo through the buildings, the music can be heard outside.  The dross gathered on the front steps of the tenements pay it no attention for the most part, but occasionally, one looks up into the dark night towards the sky, stars hidden by the lights of a city in despair, and sighs, hearing the violinist’s melancholy song.

            It came from the crumbling redbrick between the dissatisfying government housing, a single three-story dwarfed by the unfeeling concrete monoliths next to it.  It was rotting and in disrepair: once, it may have been enviable, when the neighborhood was still enviable and white.  Following every winter, more shingles fell from the roof, and more vines pulled apart the mortar between the bricks; every spring, more water seeped in through the broken foundation.  The house of Arthur Wade.

            The tall, gaunt man stood at almost military attention, finger flipping across yellowed pages on a music stand, mumbling to himself.  His skin was pale and sickly, and although not an incredibly old man, he looked much older than his actual years.  A lifetime spent indoors, shut away from the horrible world around him.  He mumbled as he paged through the yellow paper, his thinning, raggedly cut hair falling in front of his ancient reading glasses.  Arthur gave a yelp in pain, bringing his thumb to his mouth as a few drops of crimson stained the paper.  He pulled his thumb out, and stared intently at his hand, watching the blood congeal and run down towards his wrist. “Bow hand. Bow hand, Bow hand,” he muttered, over and over again as he pulled a stained handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped his hand up in it.  The violent red began seeping through the light cotton, but Arthur was already staring back down at the papers in front of him, humming now, tracing lines with his left hand, as he precariously held the right close to his face, the white handkerchief now spotted with blood.  He turned the page, and continued humming.

            The blood stopped, and the handkerchief barely had time to fall to the floor before Arthur arched his arm and dragged the bow across the violin’s strings as a howling screech before a single note echoed through the room, reverberating against the yellowed wallpaper and falling back into Arthur’s ears.  His eyes closed, yet eyelid’s fluttering to the music, he began to play the sweet, mournful song.  The music swelled through the house and out the boarded up windows, before falling on the ears of the old black woman walking up from the street.  Past her, no one heard.

            She stood on the ancient front porch, listening to the music, a canvas bag tightly grasped between her hands.  After a few minutes, the notes died, and she reached for the brass knocker, bringing down on the door as strongly as her hands could manage.  She waited a few minutes before knocking again, and almost immediately, a compartment slid open across the door and she was greeted by the cold, blue gaze of Arthur Wade’s eyes: “Mrs. Washington.”

            “Good evening, Mr. Wade.  I have your things from the store for you.” Ms. Washington smiled at him through the door, and was greeted by the rattle of locks and chains.  It slid open enough for a pale hand to stretch out, grasping the canvas bag and pulling it quickly out of the old woman’s grasp.  It retreated into the darkness beyond the door before returning with a crumpled twenty dollar bill.  Mrs. Washington took it gingerly, and then paused to shake the hand, as Arthur attempted to return it to the darkness of the house.  “Mr. Wade, it’s a lovely night out.  Why don’t you come outside?”  The door slammed closed after the hand returned inside, and the click of locks and the rattle of chains could be heard.  Mrs. Washington shook her head and walked down the sidewalk.

            Arthur examined the contents of the canvas bag while sitting in a dusty wooden chair in the ruined kitchen; the cupboards were mostly empty, until he began placing an amount of tin cans into them.  He reached into a poorly varnished drawer, brushing aside a wayward cockroach as he pulled out a can opener.  After opening the can, he reached back into the drawer and procured a single match, striking it against the rough wood under the peeling plastic of the table.  It sparked, as he rushed toward the stove, lighting it before placing the can upon it.  Almost stumbling backwards, Arthur turned and walked down the hall back into the bedroom: a dirty mattress and old blankets sitting in a corner, surrounded by stacks of yellowed and dusty books, all on music.  He carefully selects one titled Schumann and sits on the overstuffed chair in the corner opposite his bed.  Outside, the wind began to pick up, and the house creaked around him, but Arthur paid it no mind.

            After several minutes, he returned to the kitchen and removed the can from the stovetop with an old potholder.  Sitting at the table, book in hand, Arthur began to eat, as he always did.  The soup dribbled down his thin lips, before he wiped the back of his sleeve against them, adding another stain to the faded red fabric.  Above him, as he intently continued to read, a faded photograph looked down at him.  The boy in the picture stood smiling in front of a middle-aged woman, carrying the hawkish nose and the short chin of Arthur.  A violin was clutched in the boy’s hand; a boy with the same hawkish nose and short chin.  Arthur finished his meal, dumping the can into a slot through the wall, as the clank fell into the alley next to the house and directly into an open garbage can.  It fell loudly, amplified by a yowl as a tabby jumped from inside the can and took off further into the alley.  With a gushing of brown water, Arthur clumsily washed the spoon, placing it back into drawer.  The cockroach was nowhere to be seen.

            The house was in complete disrepair.  The stairs leading to the top floors sagged and gradually coalesced into a mass of splintered wood below the top floor.  The light caught a glimmer of a cat’s eye: the feral occupant of the second floor, content to prowl at night for mice and rats through the inhabited mess of the first floor.  The carpeting was worn through in a single track down the hallway, the same path Arthur trudged towards his bedroom.  He sat back down in the over-stuffed chair, and continued reading, mumbling to himself.  He fell asleep quickly, knuckles turning white against the book, the sunlight barely disappearing behind the buildings crowding the horizon.

Writer's block defeated

Fuck writer's block.  Seriously you guys.  Fuck it. Sucks so bad.  I tried staring it away, i tried writing it away (terribly) and I tried drinking it away.  Then, a couple of days ago I had a breakthrough while shooting the shit with a friend.  Brainstorm.

Everything I've been working on is shelved until I can get a fresh perspective on it.  Sorry.  I left you in the middle of the story, one that I can't resolve.  I know where I want to go with it, where it'll end, but not how I'm going to write it.

But fret not, for I am consumed by the fire of a new ambition.  Drawing an idea from one of the greatest literary works of the english language.  I'm fairly excited