The Harp
Hi! I'm not dead! Or, maybe I am. Who knows.
I know I haven't posted anything in like five-ever, but I'm working on it. I have a couple projects underway. I'm also working on getting the next chapters for two of my Mixed Writings books up. I don't think I'm gonna continue on the Harry Potter one. Or, I'll just change the first chapter. We'll see.
Anyway, stuff for this short story.
About 50 years ago, so around 1970 probably, a guy named Harris Burdick came into a publisher's office. He handed over 13 drawings with 13 captions and 13 titles, each linked to a different short story he had written. The publisher was very interested and asked Burdick to come back with the entirety of his short stories so they could be published.
He never did. The publisher even hired private investigators later in life but was unable to find Burdick. Eventually, he told all this to Chris Van Allsburg, who ended up publishing all of the pictures etc. This caused someone to come forward with a very similar drawing, with a caption and the same title as one of the other stories, that he had found in the back of an antique mirror he had gotten at an auction.
Personally, I think that all of this is a load of BS that Chris Van Allsburg made up for clout. But I digress.
For a language art assignment, my class was told to pick one of the pictures and write a short story based on it.
I chose the picture above with the title, "The Harp" and the caption, "So it's true. It's really true."
I really liked the result, so here you go.
Tw: Suicide, suicidal thoughts, existential crisis thoughts, loneliness, death and mentions of it, gender dysphoria. Tell me if I missed anything
(Also the 'solutions' to historical mysteries in here are just theories about them that I found compelling. I am not omnipotent and do not know the real answers.)
"-I'm just saying, one of them ate her. All the evidence is there! Her plane was found in Nikumaroro Lagoon, and Nikumaroro Island literally abounds with coconut crabs! And it's not like they can't, I mean-"
I stopped mid-sentence. Of course Lea wasn't listening. She never did.
I'd been talking for a while anyway, and Lea was never very interested in my theories. I should try harder to not be as boring, and then she'll listen. Or I should just not talk.
She was invested in her phone right now, and didn't notice that I had gotten quiet.
I sighed a bit and mirrored her, taking out my phone and slumping into the living room couch. Pinterest was already open: on something about griffins.
We sat in silence for almost fifteen minutes, with Lea seeming to pay more attention to her phone than she ever had to me. But as she chuckled at something on the screen, filling the room with her joy and letting those close bask in her warmth, I remembered why I liked her.
She cracked jokes like no one else, and made me smile when I thought it was impossible. And she was always so sure of herself and the future, even being in her presence made me more confident.
But now it seemed like she was just bored with me. And that was okay.
I looked back at my phone, swiping over to the next pin. At the top was a drawing of a glowing Harp. Made of some kind of dark, lacquered, wood with strings like silver. I could almost hear it singing.
The caption under it read:
No one knows how the Harp of Aphrodite plays, though it's song is said to fulfill the desires of anyone that listens. Many have heard traces of it in the wooded areas of southwest Germany. While countless have set out to find the Harp, they come back having failed - if they return at all.
Southwest Germany! That's where Freiburg was! And I live right by the woods!
Maybe me and Lea would be able to find it! I wondered what her desire, or desires, were?
I grinned and whirled around to look at Lea.
"I-!"
"My mom's here. Bye, Billie." Without even looking up, she rolled off the couch, patted my head, and walked out the front door.
"...Bye."
*************
It had been a few hours. I had made dinner, taken a shower, and even tried re-reading the comic books I had had since primary.
But none of it helped.
So here I was, laying in my bed, wallowing in my loneliness and self pity, right where I had been for the past two hours.
The sun was set far beyond the horizon, and a star or two glittered dully outside my window.
I wanted to get up, grab a book, check my phone sitting arm's reach away on my nightstand, anything really. But my body had decided it was one of those days that it didn't want to co-operate with me, so when I moved my hand, it was only to scratch at my skull then return to the blankets.
This was so frustrating! I hated it!
I hated hearing the front door click open at probably ten at night as my Dad got home from his shift! I hated listening to him shuffle around downstairs, and I hated the flicker of hope that he might say hello. I hated it even more when he walked right past my room and let his bedroom door fall shut behind him.
So I just lay there, wishing that for just one night he would tell me he loved me when he got home. Hoping maybe one of these days he would remember.
When I remembered something first.
The Harp. The one supposed to 'fulfill your desires'. Maybe if I found it, Dad would pay more attention to me.
A sort of adrenaline filled my body, and I tried to push myself up with it, though dismissing the idea. It was Thursday, and I still had school tomorrow. And Saturdays were some of the only days I really got to see my Dad. I couldn't miss that.
But my body didn't seem to like that. And while the adrenaline and motivation stayed, so did I. In the exact. Same. Spot.
I tried again to force my limbs to move, to get me out of bed so I could at least finish what was left of my homework.
But of course, it didn't work.
I began to consider the idea more, as I had nothing else to do.
Dad sometimes saw me in the mornings, but not always. And when I was the reason, he didn't usually come to check on me. He didn't answer his phone either, especially when it was my school. There were a lot of useless calls.
I didn't really have any reason to go to school either. Summer break was almost here, and none of the assignments held much weight anymore. Besides, it's not like I had many friends to worry about me. Which I was fine with.
If I just texted Lea about it, and left tonight, then I wouldn't get in too much trouble and wouldn't miss my Saturday. I would turn back if it was taking too long.
My body finally responded to me, and I pushed myself off my bed and grabbed my backpack. I dumped out some of the things in there that I wouldn't be needing, grabbed some clothes, my pillow, and my phone. I sent a quick message about feeling sick to Lea and shoved it in my pack.
I quietly went downstairs, stuffed some food - energy bars, a shake, etc. - into one of the pockets, and reached for the back door handle.
Was I really about to do this? What if I got hurt? What if the Harp didn't even exist?
....
Then at least I'll know.
I locked the door behind me and left for the woods.
*************
The forest was as silent as it was dark.
Lady Artemis rode behind a wall of clouds, letting her minimal light frame the trees like the giants of old. They had hundreds of spindly limbs, each with a thousand sharp fingers that brushed my head as I stepped through the underbrush.
Leaves and dirt quietly crunched under my boots. My light breath swirled with it to create an empty symphony.
No animals joined.
Their howls and swishes, tweeting and baying, had disappeared with the vrooming of cars and yells of rowdy teenagers. Even the wind seemed scared to breathe.
Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being watched. It wasn't... scary, exactly. I didn't think whatever, or whoever, it was would hurt me. But I couldn't deny that it was there.
Hiding somewhere in the boughs of the giants surrounding me, jumping from arm to arm so as to follow my path.
Maybe-
Smack!
I ran face-first into one of the trees and toppled over. I couldn't help but picture the great being reaching down to grab me as I lay, dazed, on it's floor.
Something wet moved through my hair, chilling a line down my scalp.
It was breathing.
Short, silent puffs freezing my scalp.
My head was pounding.
I opened my eyes, and noticed a line of fur at the top of my vision.
Had I somehow made it across the River Styx? Was this Cerberus?
I accidentally let a small giggle slip out of my mouth as I remembered what the name translated to. Spotted.
Hades had named his three headed guard dog Spot.
A short little nose darted up above me, and I couldn't help but laugh more.
I laughed and laughed and laughed as a fox began to circle me. It's ears were pointed straight towards the sky, and it gaped a bit at me.
I pushed myself up, with a little grunt, and reached towards it. No surprise, it skittered back. It was almost floating, so little did it disturb the ground beneath it.
I frowned, and had an idea.
I slowly moved my backpack in front of me and unzipped the biggest pocket. Grabbing a small container of peanut butter I had taken, since it was good even without anything else, I popped off it's top and set it down on the ground in front of me.
The fox sniffed, tilting its head to the side. Slowly, carefully, it stepped forwards, until it was right above the container. It tried to pick it up by the edge, but the plastic slid right out of its teeth.
It attempted this a few more times, each time seeming to get a bit more frustrated.
Finally, it gave in and began to lick the peanut butter from the inside.
I pushed my backpack off my lap and bent a bit to see it better.
Its dull red fur stood out in the dark, and it's teeth seemed surprisingly white. White hair padded the inside of its ears, which twitched with excitement.
Once it finished, it looked up at me and laughed. The noise was akin to the manic chuckling of a leprechaun, filling the silent air.
But it only lasted a second.
The sound completely cut off, whether of the foxes own volition... or something else's.
I hummed a bit, studying the little being.
The air suddenly felt like it was being ripped from my lungs, and when I gasped, nothing came out.
My heart sped up faster than a rocket car as my lungs began to heave.
Air filled them again almost immediately, but it hurt to push it in and out of my mouth.
Chains of silence choked seemingly every being in this world, dragging them slowly to death. I was just another cuff added to the end.
I wondered how many people, children, wandered these woods now. Lost and screaming only for nothing to come out. How many would be found years too late, their bodies homes for moss and bugs. And how many would never be found at all.
Would I join them?
My body felt chilled, rooted to the spot. Staring at that little fox, who stared back. My only anchor. My only friend.
It turned its head.
And ran.
Through the closest trees, deeper into the forest.
The chains around my voice box tightened as I failed to yell. I burst up to follow.
I couldn't lose it.
*************
The fox disappeared beyond a bend. When I rocketed after, I almost tripped on it's short body. It had stopped in a small clearing.
Lord Apollo had begun his ride, and soft pink and yellow light illuminated the space around me.
The grass grew tall and unruly, with little flowers periodically peeking over the tips. A few rocks sat in the very center, just large enough to rest on.
I stumbled over and dropped onto one of them. My breath came ragged, but still failed to permeate the air. The complete silence was starting to hurt my ears, and my head swirled.
I doubled over and tried to reset my mind, the palms of my hands shoved into my eyes like they were my only grip left on reality. A little furry head pushed my wrist aside and poked into the crook of my elbow.
I sighed and let my arms fall, one to my side to support me, and the other onto the foxes head.
I slowly pet it, letting myself come full back to the real world.
I had no idea where I was, or where home was, or how long it had been. Was this the first or second sunrise since I had left?
I reached around for my backpack to get a drink of water. Maybe it would help me cool down.
It wasn't behind me. It wasn't by my feet, it wasn't on a rock. It was gone!
I had forgotten my backpack when I chased after the fox!
There was no way I could find it now. I couldn't even find where I had come into the clearing!
I was going to starve! Or die of dehydration. Or get eaten or go insane from all this damn silence!
Wait.
It wasn't silent anymore.
I almost couldn't process what I was hearing.
A beautiful, slow, plucking. The reverberating of every note entering my ears, drifting through my skull, and taking much too long to register in my brain.
A harp.
Soothing my tense form and frantic playing with my sleeve. Calling me from my seat to come find it, to fulfill my wishes, to learn the truth about everything.
I slowly stood up and made my way into the trees, with no idea where I was going. Just that it was the right way.
Boughs scraped down from the heavens, framed in golden light like hands reaching out for me to shake. The dewey grass wet the bottoms of my beaten up shoes, and the sun warmed my freezing face.
As I walked, a voice began to sing.
A voice so deep it at first sounded like the mountains themselves waking from thousand-year naps. The hulking trees around me shook with this singer's rumblings, which shifted past me and bounced on my bones.
I got over my original daze, my love and longing, and began to listen to what the singer was telling me.
The song whispered of great, mysterious, and absolute truths.
About how Amelia Earhart had disappeared: with a crash landing and many hungry coconut crabs.
How Chris Van Allsberg had made up the mysterious Mr. Burdick in order to create a storyline for his art.
How the hikers from Dyatlov Pass had fallen victim to infrasound, causing them to go insane and torture themselves. Those on board the Mary Celeste had left after an alcohol explosion that did not harm the ship, but gave her passengers quite a scare. They failed to make it across the ocean in their lifeboat and eventually drowned. The Sodder children were kidnapped by members of the mafia. The Bermuda Triangle phenomenon was caused by the agonic line, which those that disappeared failed to account for.
I followed the noise listlessly, so caught up in it's truths that I didn't even notice how I weaved through the trees, ducking and jumping and jogging, until my foot landed on a wet patch of grass and the water began to soak through my shoe.
I snapped out of my trance to find the sun glaring in my eyes. I turned and blinked rapidly, waiting for my vision to return enough to see what was going on.
I was surrounded by hills. The trees on them had grown sparser, and instead of their rich green, they now appeared like the molting orange and reds of fall.
The Harp still played, and the song continued.
The story was true. I'd wanted to know most of these things for years, and researching them was my main pastime. Many times, I found them more entertaining than anything else, including other humans.
But most everything was more interesting than people.
One of my great desires was to learn the secrets of history.
I thought I really knew where it was coming from now. Over the next hill, maybe a bit further.
The fox came up beside me and nudged me towards it.
I wanted to relish this moment, so I made sure to slow my walk as I began to listen again.
This time, the truths it told were different.
They were about me.
The song sang how I had won that spelling bee in second grade, and I only officially hadn't because I wasn't very popular and the kids weren't paying much attention.
It told me how I had actually seen, and been right about, the ghosts in my elementary school.
As I began to pass the hill, adrenaline and excitement filling my body, it told me I was right to come.
A river ran through the hills, just as silent as everything else, but still roaring with it's might. Tilting trees leaned from the hills, softly shaking their leaves. Perfectly content, even in this silent world. Just like I was now.
I finally got fully past the trees blocking my view. I looked to the side.
And there it was.
The Harp of Aphrodite was everything I had imagined it would be.
But the person playing it was so. Much. Better.
That amazing, deep, rock-and-roll voice that shook the trees and crashed against me like towering waves belonged to the teenager. The teenager; wearing a perfectly pressed blazer and a tie like flames.
The kid's smooth white shirt hugged a thin waist and perfectly contrasted the long, healthy, black hair dancing in the wind.
They were me.
They were Billie, and I loved them.
But when I looked down at myself, in my ripped shirt and stained jeans, and when I ran my fingers through my painfully short hair...
Well, they were everything I wasn't.
And that hurt so, so badly.
My lungs crippled. My heart disappeared, leaving an aching emptiness.
I had to meet them.
As I walked forwards to go say hello to myself, I began again to listen to the lyrics.
They told me things... I didn't want to know.
They told me how Lea had never really liked me, she just used me to get rides home and for a place to wait for her mom.
That my Dad sometimes missed the times he and I had together, the dinners spent laughing every night. But when he got home from his excruciatingly long shifts, he forgot. He forgot to say goodnight, to say I love you. He forgot that I, his own child, even existed!
He barely even thought about me anymore. And why would he?
The song knew how useless and annoying and lazy and idiotic I was. I could never do anything right. I couldn't even help my Dad.
They told me truths that danced and spun in my head, and I knew they were true because I have always known them.
They, who was me, who I could never even hope to be.
...I told myself... that only one person had ever really loved me. My mother.
My mother who died during childbirth. My mother who never even met me, who had never heard my voice, was the only person in the world that really loved me.
I told myself she would hate me if she had met me.
I said that my life was meaningless. In the great span of the universe, what was I? I was a miniscule little speck. I was less than that. I would never be anything more, and to hope for that was ignorance worse than anything else.
Death was inevitable anyway. Everything and everyone that ever lived would die, and eventually everyone, no matter how influential, would be forgotten and there was nothing anyone could do about it!
No one beyond maybe my grandkids would even know I existed. Ad to them I would just be that one annoying grandparent that they hated
..That one annoying grandfather... that they hated.
I knew that.
And I knew all of it was true.
Because why would I lie?
My ideal self got up from their spot by the Harp and stopped singing. They approached me, and helped me down from the log. They smiled, and they offered me an alternative.
"Life is pain. It is unfair. It won't get better. That's just something people say. And if it ends anyway, what's the point of sticking around?" Their voice blanketed me in comfort, and layered in my veins.
"The river is deep enough. It won't hurt."
I turned back to the water, to find that it had slowed to a trickle.
I walked to the very edge. I could see my reflection in the water.
Dirty. Pale. Masculine. Ugly. Unhygienic.
Helpless. Dumb. Naive.
Not deserving of life.
I glanced back at myself. They nodded and smiled softly at me.
I jumped.
The water was freezing. My limbs were numb and I couldn't move even if I wanted to.
The water was clear. I saw my legs slightly above my head, my shirt floating up.
I saw as I approached the edge of the water, with my little fox in tow, and stared as I sunk.
As the me that was never supposed to be me, the me that I had been forced to live with for fifteen years, sunk.
As my prison's lungs filled with water and it began to suffocate.
In this body's dying moments, I looked back to my ideal and my fox.
Only to find that they didn't even exist. They were illusions.
The face melted off of my ideal, revealing an eye-less, nose-less monster. Dripping in slime and black goo, the only thing resting on its face was an uncanny white smile.
My little fox became just a clump of that goo and melted into the monster that I was.
It's long, spindly, fingers reached down. Into the water. To grasp my neck in a hold like iron and feel as the last dregs of life left my prison.
My vision faded.
The creature chuckled.
The End
Never Listen to a Harp
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