The Day the World Ran Out of Tunes

Posted on by inkbiotic

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The panic started small but scattered, as across the world bands and songwriters floundered in their hunt for new tunes.

“You can’t use that. That’s Love Me Do by the Beatles,” said an advertising executive in Manchester, when he heard the proposed new jingle for Asda.

“No. Eso es Beethoven,” said a drummer in a death metal band in Buenos Aires, when he heard the song the band was working on.

With each new pin prick of alarm, the truth shone through a little more clearly. Until finally there was no getting away from it: every combination of notes had been used, even the ugly ones. There were no more tunes possible.

Journalists leapt with enthusiasm onto one of the biggest feel-bad stories of the century. This was it, this was the moment when it could truly be said that the youth of today were fundamentally unoriginal, when the decline of society and the abandonment of all joy were a certainty.

Pseudo experts and professional doomsayers were linked up by satellite to talk about exactly what had happened and what it meant. From the dry to the melodramatic, every emotional response was covered.

“Well, it was inevitable, really. There are only so many notes and a finite combination of them.”

“We will be a music-less society, only time will tell just how this will affect us.”

“These are the end days, without music our souls will wither!”

As always the world carried on, people went to work, dogs were walked, coffee was drunk; but there was a sadness to it, a reverent quietness. The human race was in mourning. Nobody whistled or sang, afraid to be seen as insensitive. Work slowed, its dullness impossible to escape. Lovers looked at each other with shocked honesty, without the delusion of tune to hide the truth with romance. Radios played only white noise, the TV played credits in silence.

It lasted three days.

Then an impatient journalist started shouting across Twitter, he was a man who was practised pointing out the stupidity of the world

“Seriously? This matters? This doesn’t matter. Just recycle the old tunes. Play them fast, slower, sung by an elephant in a clown suit,” he tweeted.

“Nobody cares about music anymore, it’s all about the spectacle,” he continued.

The tweets quickly spread and became a hope, the hope became a belief and the belief became the truth.

And so the music played on, faster, slower, sung by elephants in clown suits. People tapped their feet and forgot there was ever such a thing as a new tune.

The Glint of the Palette Knife

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Jorge wasn’t sure how he became a celebrated artist. Utterly lost to the swirl of a palette knife, he barely noticed when his paintings, hung at the local café, were noticed by a shrewd agent with a knack for publicity, and sold to local landowners for an inflated price. Jorge kept painting, too engrossed in capturing the details of light and shade to notice his agent carry out a campaign of exclusivity and mystery that saw his paintings exhibited at larger galleries and sold to celebrities, who loved the stories of this reclusive painter as much as they loved the paintings. Eventually even princes and kings across the world became caught in the whirl of colour and the promise of a talent that only the elite could afford.

Jorge kept painting, he was happy to paint on demand, the colours were the same no matter who he painted. He painted party scenes, domestic gatherings, ceremonies, even the bizarre rituals of secret societies that were to be hung on the walls of private chambers. He painted life, animated faces that showed more expression than the botoxed originals.

It was years before someone noticed the anomaly, that in each painting, standing at the back of the action, head down, face blurry, wearing a green dress; there was a girl. At the back of a party scene she stood, barely a sketch. Hovering in a doorway of a grand hall, her clothes shabbier and barely defined, there she stood again. Through the decades he painted her, always at the back, her face never clear. Through his glittering career, painting portraits of dignitaries and royalty, always she was there. Sometimes just a shadow, sometimes only a sketch of her hand and a flash of the green dress, but always there. It became a quirk, a signature, something a connoisseur would recognise. The rich and the famous congratulated one another on knowing about the secret girl, of course the commoners barely knew Jorge’s paintings. Jorge kept painting.

Jorge told nobody that the painting was of his sister. She had died aged ten.  Her cancer was treatable, but Jorge’s family couldn’t afford the medicine. That was in more difficult days.

With each painting she grew stronger. A little more definition to her threadbare dress, more darkness to her eyes, a glint to her teeth. Sometimes he would chuckle as he painted her, remembering how she would dance on the sofa and pick flowers at the side of the road. Each painting was a step closer to when she would walk free and live again. Throughout the richest households in the land, at quietly held meetings of the secret rulers of the world, his sister was there, watching. She was waiting, one day soon she would be ready to step free and take revenge.

Jorge kept painting.

Microfiction: The Scrapings

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And again, some one line stories:

We knew it would end like this, not with a bang or a whimper, but with a loud harrumph.

“That’s just how it is,” he rasped, “men show their feelings by hitting each other, women by affection.” And that was when I knew I wanted to be a woman.

“Drunken poetry,” she wrote with a flourish in pink biro, “it contains all truth. Drunken poetry,” then she gave up, as the rhymes deserted her.

A light flickered, the air grew cold. Grandma had returned.

“That’s just how it is,” she ranted, “men prove their strength by striding round the world conquering things. Women prove their strength by enduring, by suffering.” And that was when I knew, I wanted to be a man.

Leading a double life was difficult with Facebook, it took planning and copious notes.

He woke up slowly, his head thundering and his stomach lurching. He eased himself onto his side and saw the Devil sleeping peacefully beside him. I am never drinking again, he thought.

“That’s just how it is,” they shouted, “people are selfish. They all want to be rich, and they don’t care who suffers as a result.” And that was when I knew I wanted to be an alien.

Behind the Door

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The sun was shining and she’d got an A for her essay, life was good. As they strolled down the corridor to their next class, she felt that the world was her onion.

“There’s something weird about that classroom,” she said, stopping and gesturing with a wave of her books. “Have you noticed? The door doesn’t look like the other doors, it’s too thick, with bars across the little window. Freaky,” she added, trying to peer in.

“Just leave it!” he hissed in response.

“What? Why?” he really was unnecessarily huffy at times.

“It’s better if you just don’t pay attention, it’s safer,” his voice was becoming a whine now and her curiosity had only grown, filling her concentration.

“Why?” she asked again, adding a small pout, she liked to know things, she didn’t like to be left out. “Is it a cult? Or a nudist colony?” Their college was like hive for unpopular courses and rooms rented out to oddball organizations.

He sighed and leaned in close to her, his eyes darting back and forth.

“That’s where the war is. You can’t do anything about it, it’s best if you don’t look.”

“What?” the answer was so unexpected she wasn’t sure how to reply, but he said nothing and was already scurrying away down the corridor. “What war? What are you talking about?” but he was gone.

Impatient with his nonsense, she barely hesitated before opening the door and looking inside. She watched for only moment before slamming the door, but the images stayed, hovering just beneath the eyes, ready to flash. A child’s face in horror, his arm severed; a soldier holding the head of his dying friend; an explosion that caused nobody even to raise their heads, their ability to feel already exceeded. She ran.

Nobody listened when she told them about the room. She suspected that some knew, she saw the shifty, desperate look in their eyes. Anyone who didn’t know, saw her as yet another hysterical student with a ridiculous complaint. And she was tired, an exhaustion that seemed to play with her certainty, so that she wasn’t sure. Had she really seen it? Was it as bad as she had thought? Maybe it was an acting class, maybe it was just a film playing.

Sometimes she would be sitting in class and she’d hear the sound of gunshot, or distant screams, but the teacher only spoke a little louder and his expression never changed. There were days when the door to the war would be open a crack and inside she would glimpse a moment of death, but she learned to keep her eyes straight ahead. The war wouldn’t ever end, it was best to not look.

I Keep Small

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I am very careful. I keep small. Unobtrusive, with only pin pricks of behaviour and momentary stutters.

I don’t mention you.

Or me.

Or the waxing waning of my shadow beneath your light.

I keep my pens in a row. I drink coffee with soya milk. I try not to sleep through meetings. I smile politely, I flick crumbs from my shirt.

Then I remember your smile and a frenzy of memories rattle my stupor to a waking roar, with an ocean incomplete and a sky full of holes.

I write an email and forget the heading. I make another coffee.

I watch time tip so slowly that my eyes cross.

I’ll meet you on the overmorrow,

Until then I barely exist.

 

This is Not a Love Poem

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A torn photograph of a turbulent sea

A crawling ladybird, its wings plucked free

A stained jacket sleeve, a discarded shoe

These foolish things remind me of you

 

A bruise and a stitch I can’t fathom at all

A mysterious stain on the bathroom wall

A doll dismembered and reformed with glue

These foolish things remind me of you

 

Drops of blood leading out of the door

A chalk outline, half-drawn on the floor

Your name crossed out in a botched tattoo

These foolish things remind me of you

 

Short story: Insidious Demands

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– Hey there pretty lady, are you sitting all alone? A beautiful lady like you shouldn’t be alone.

– Oh, erm, hello, I’m just waiting for my friends, they’ll be here soon. Any minute now.

– Why don’t I keep you company then, hmm? You look like you could do with some company, just until they get here.

– Well, um, I’m not sure… it’s a bit of a school reunion, you see? Not an official one, just the old gang getting together again. I’m really quite nervous, it’s been so long.

– That’s why you need me to talk to, make a new friend while you’re waiting for the old ones.

– Well maybe, I mean. Maybe they’ll think it’s rude if I’m talking to someone else…

– Hey now, you shouldn’t be worrying about that, when we’ve got this chance to get to know each other, hmm?

– Well, I suppose. And it’s the kind of thing that we used to do back then, just start chatting to some random stranger. Kirsty especially, I could tell you some crazy stories. Whenever we took the train we’d end up talking to some boys or making friends with an old tramp.

– Well that’s great, I think you and me already have a real connection, don’t you? How about I buy you a drink?

–  Oh I don’t want to start drinking yet. Once the others get here, then I imagine it will be a free for all. More alcohol than you can shake a stick at, you know? Not that we were alcoholics, but we did like a drink.

– You don’t need to be so uptight about it, just have a drink with me.

– Oh Kirsty would love you. She did like a pushy fella who’d buy her a drink, she liked to play with them, she liked the risk. Oh, I can’t wait to see the old gang, I haven’t seen them in years, not that it should matter, I mean when you’re friends with someone, that’s it for life, isn’t it? They say your teenage friends are your greatest friends, right? Didn’t they say that in a film once? We were all very different back then though, and there were reasons we stopped being friends…

– Right, well that’s interesting…

– Kirsty especially got out of hand, not violent exactly, but, well there were incidents. Not that it was her fault, if I’d had that man as my father I’d have done a lot more than throw bottles at a car. Of course it would be all different if we were kids now, we’d spend our whole lives on the phone chatting to paedophiles. And you know kids today, the only time they actually look at one another is when they need to take a selfie, or a we-lie, or is it an us-y? I don’t know why they need to keep making up new words, like there aren’t enough words to deal with already. I mean there’s a whole dictionary full of the things.

– How about I get us that drink…

– Anyway, I was telling you about Kirsty, you’ll like her, all the boys did at school. It’s odd because she was never that fastidious about personal hygiene, but then they say attraction is all about pheromones, so maybe she just didn’t wash hers off as much. You’d think the feet smell would mask the pheromones though wouldn’t you?

– Mmm.

– Fastidious, now there’s an interesting word that kids today never use. They’re too busy with their OMGs and YOLOs. But anyway, Kirsty, apparently she’s a big shot consultant now, earning a fortune in the city. Well it’s not really surprising, she was always clever. Clever and bored, that was her problem, school just wasn’t enough to occupy her, she could pass exams without even studying, lucky cow.

– Well that’s great, but maybe…

– Anyway, we all found each other on Facebook, it’s amazing isn’t it? Modern technology? Fifteen years, all five of us scattered across the globe. All going about our business never expecting to see each other again. Then a few clicks of the mouse and there you are, the whole gang together. Kirsty, Jennifer, Archisha, little Sarah and big Sarah. Of course big Sarah is not so big now. She actually looks fantastic. Not that she didn’t when she was a teenager, but, well, you know what it’s like for larger girls, it’s tough. Except it’s probably fine now, now that obesity is so common. Big Sarah would probably be considered quite svelte. Quite svelte Sarah we’d have to call her. Although I expect we’d be arrested under the Political-Correctness-Gone-Mad Act for it. You know at my son’s school they actually have a points system for bullying? Like with driving, you get too many points for picking on other kids and you have to take an anti-bullying test. Well, I said to the teacher, that’s just another form of bullying isn’t it? You’re bullying my son now, how about you take a test? How about I set that damn test? And yes, I did swear, but you can’t let these teachers push you around, can you?

– Ok, um, I really need to go now…

– Oh sorry, sorry, I got totally side-tracked, I was telling you about the gang, wasn’t I? Well there was Jennifer, sweet, mousy Jennifer, all the boys who didn’t go for smelly Kirsty, went for Jen. I never really understood why, I mean, she was pretty in a bland, unthreatening way, but there was no spark to her. Maybe that’s what they liked, someone who’d make them feel sparky by comparison. Boys don’t like to try too hard do they?

– Lady, let go of my arm…

– But I haven’t told you about Archisha and she’ll be here any minute. And hers is such a lovely story. When she joined the gang she was much like Jennifer, mousy. She followed us around with those big eyes, trying to make jokes, but she wasn’t funny, just awful. Then one of the boys took a shine to her and then she started to take a shine to herself, you know? I mean, we helped her out with make-up, lent her clothes and so on, but it was a total transformation, she blossomed. Became a bit full of herself to be honest, and she didn’t stop cracking those awful jokes, but the boys would just laugh and laugh, trying to impress her. I suppose they thought she was exotic, or is that impoliticly correct now too?

– I need to go, please let me go…

– Yes, that’s right, you run along now. Run right along.

Microfiction: The Wordicons

Posted on by inkbiotic

Thanks to Wisp of Smoke  for inspiring the title. Some more very small tales, unconnected, although I always end up imagining a story that ties them altogether. Anyway…

 

Inside the locket she kept a demon’s egg.

He carved and whittled, preserving the faces of the dead in fruit. It was the least he could do.

“It was just easier to be clever, when there was so much less to know,” said the polymath, mournfully.

She sat on the bus, gripping the seat in front, with her eyes shut. ‘They ripped him out of me’, she whispered to no one in particular.

His expression flicked back and forth from hopeful to blank to hopeful; as nothing helpful continued to happen.

Don’t look.

Posted on by inkbiotic

The memory is like an ache in my teeth and a twist under each moment. Like a sodden, dirty rag wrapping my feet to a stumble. The abyss hangs sac-like below my eyes, beckoning me to throw hope away and climb inside. But in a wink and shimmy the bone dead is up and walking. I freeze my fear and keep on keeping on.

The memory is like a distant hammering that I can ignore if I keep the music loud. An interruption that warps my words when I speak, so I try not to speak. Like a phantom tickling my toes, but powerless to hurt unless I believe. I can’t believe, I stare ahead.

The memory is definitely gone and my feet are flat on the floor so I can’t fall down. It’s gone and I’m a busy, busy bee with things to do and see. Like the juice of rotting meat seeped into the world, but cleaned and leaving no stain, it’s gone. Like it was never here at all.