Failures aren't fun!

I don't like this story. I wanted to tell a sort of fairy tale, but it comes off as twee and a little crass. The advantage of these writing experiments is that they can give me an opportunity to explore new styles or silly ideas. That's potentially great fun, but sometimes I'll come out with something like this.

Failure is instructive. I can look at this story and see how the characterisation doesn't build and how little fantastical elements pop in out of nowhere. That's a problem, and it comes from trying to write a short story based on the Grimm model and fairy tale style.

That doesn't change how annoyed it makes me! Of course, maybe you feel differently. I still feel like there was the start of a good idea in here somewhere...

Two men and a boy - London Underground - Ukelele

Once upon a time, not all that long ago, there was a boy. He would have been a normal boy, but he lived in dangerous times. Every night fire and death rained from the sky as sirens screamed warnings into the darkness. The people of the city of London would shelter themselves from the destruction, many of them in the tunnels that run deep below the earth of the city.

There was much death in those days, and many of the children were sent away from the city, out to the countryside where it was safe. However, not all of the city’s children had families to make sure that they went. This boy was one such child, having lost his family before the great evacuation, he had slept without a home before the world’s war had even begun.

In fact when the bombs started falling he suddenly had a real place to sleep, underground in the tunnels. With all the other people surrounding him, it was almost as if he had a family again. When the war ended, and everyone celebrated, the boy was left alone and destitute. Made miserable by the very thing everyone else celebrated made him alienated like never before.

But in his lowest, there came suddenly a spark of hope. He found it amidst the wreckage of a house not yet cleared away, a case containing a small guitar-like instrument, but smaller and with four strings. It fit perfectly into his small hands, and he felt warmth bubbling up inside him again. It was a tatty old thing to be sure, but it was his now. Its previous owner clearly had no use for it.

He sat with it and experimented. He held down strings, plucked at them, strummed them together and saw how music could be fashioned from the instrument. He returned once more to the Underground, pouring his life-borne sorrow and music-borne joy together into his new art. People would pass by him and stare, surprised by the soul they could hear from a lad with a simple ukulele. Coins were dropped into the case by enraptured passers by that helped him to buy food and drink, sometimes even pay for a bed for the night.

He grew and was, as the phrase goes, ‘discovered’, by a wealthy lady who helped him to earn a living with his music. His renown grew, as did his wealth, and strangely so too did his instrument, gaining both size and strings. What had started as a boy’s ukulele grew into a man’s guitar, the timbre shifting with his own voice. The boy, now grown, became celebrated, even modestly wealthy thanks to the music that he played. He made a friend of his own age, a fellow guitarist from a village in the countryside, and they often played music together. Save for this friendship, he was still something of a loner, but it was enough for him.

He was content, finally, and grew old, the music he played softening into an old age, and the varnish wearing from his beloved instrument. He still went to the tunnels of the Underground that had housed him and fed him, but now simply to travel, like everyone who had once walked by him. His friend often travelled with him too, and he too was now an old man.

They had shared nearly everything with one another, but there was one more story to be shared. The man who had started with nothing finally told his friend of his miraculous instrument on one of their journeys through the tunnels of the Underground. He told him of the surprising discovery, how it had somehow taught him how to play and how it played the very music of his soul, the sound of his own life.

His friend listened quietly to the fantastical story, but was not amazed. He was not glad at his friend’s musical discoveries. He did not even smile. All he felt was jealousy. He had always been the inferior musician of the two of them. His music had never been as profitable, as lauded nor as loved. He had resigned himself to it, now only to discover that the instrument was all that had separated them!

They walked together past a musician in the tunnel and climbed the stairs ponderously to the surface. This old man’s mind still seething with envy, hit upon a scheme. He gave his friend a small nudge, knocking the walking stick from under him. The man’s eyes widened in shock as he fell back down the stairs, cracking his head on the floor, his eyes still staring accusingly at a man he had thought of as a friend.

All that the friend did was take the guitar from the man’s still tightly grasping hand.

He strolled home with a skip in his step, walking straight past his wife when he arrived without saying a word. He went immediately to play the instrument he had only just discovered was worth coveting.

All he found from the instrument was silence. Day after day he tried to play it.  He ignored his family. He ignored his friends. He never went outside. He never again enjoyed the taste of his food.

He heard nothing but the guitar’s silence until the day he died. Friendless and alone.