The Weeping Guitar

by Aishling Wray

Preface

I played the guitar very well these days. But I didn't want to tell anyone my secret.


I played the guitar quietly to myself. I never told anyone that I could play it well these days. I didn't want to share the secret after the surgery. There were a lot of things I could do a lot better these days that I couldn't before in the past... and it scared me to no ends.

I remembered when I was assigned to the front. I was scared. I had only been in the army for three years when I was sent into the war zone. I was too young. I was glad to be serving my country, but I just didn't think my time as a soldier would end so soon and with such a bloody conclusion.

It had been a day of non stop guns and explosions. I hid behind the barracks with my comrades, as we screamed over each other's voices to get the orders through and to be prepared to die brave men if we had too.

I was told to run with all my might the second I was handed something. To take it and throw it away into the distance.

But I was too late. And it exploded.

I remember the hospital... I remember the excruciating pain I had been in, no one expecting me to have survived the blast but I had... with two exceptions.

I remembered waking up, and looking down to my arms... to my hands... only to see... they were not the same as I remembered.

The memories played further back to me as I remembered seeing one of my comrades, Sean, playing the guitar... I had gotten close to him on the war zone.

"I want to be a famous musician, one day..." he said to me with a soft smile and I smiled back.

"You will..." I replied, warmth in my eyes, at his hopes and dreams... mine had only been to serve. He wanted to go to university.

I remember seeing him seconds before I had been handed the bomb... being shot repeatedly, to death. My eyes had been widened to the very true horrors of the world. I didn't want the other men to suffer his fate so I had agreed to get rid of the deadly explosion.

I remember the doctors telling me they had found a match as I lay in the hospital... the man had been on the donar list. But it had to be fast, the body parts wouldn't last for long.

And here I was two years later, playing guitar in my room. I didn't tell anyone I could play it... that I could suddenly draw really well and that my writing was no longer the same.

I remained silent... always afraid of what my decision had been at the hospital.

I strummed the instrument slowly as I played it, with Sean's fingers making the notes come off the strings in soft warm rhythms.

As his hands played the melody for me in perfect cohesion.


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