Sparks

This short story is something I came up with for fellow blogger Kevin’s No Theme Thursday post for this past week.

It’s been six months since I was last touched. I sit in the back of some kid’s closet, alone and forgotten. 

I don’t feel right. I feel loose in some areas, tight in others, and I’m covered with dust. 

Is this all there is?

###

My earliest memory was of a box cutter slicing through cardboard. I heard the snap of the plastic packing straps and then the box was opened. I could faintly see light around the edges of my case; I wondered where I was and how I got there.

Brilliant daylight blinded me when the case was opened. I was grabbed by my neck, pulled out of the case, and laid on a cold, hard surface. Somebody rubbed me down with a cloth.

After I adjusted to the light, I could see a guy with a beard. He picked me up, spun me around and dusted a few more places. He ran his finger over my strings; it made horrible twangy sounds like broken springs.

He attached something to me and started plucking my strings, tightening some and loosening others. He kept looking at a machine and when he was done, he strummed me again. This time, it sounded much better.

He gave me a final look, then put me up on a shelf with others like me.

###

Days turned into weeks as I sat on the shelf. Several times, I was taken down and handed to people who held me and strummed me. But they always handed me back with disinterest. I heard talk about names: Les Paul, BB King, Eric Clapton. I heard people say they wanted a pearl pick guard, a red body, a Stratocaster look. I didn’t understand. But I did learn my name: I was a guitar.

One day, a lady and a kid came in. She pointed, and I was taken down and handed to the kid. He strummed me while the lady and the bearded guy talked. I guess he just wanted to get rid of me because I heard talk about letting me go. I was put back in the case and the lid was closed.

###

At the kid’s house, he pushed something into me that was attached to some kind of cord. He plugged the other end into a box and turned some switches. I heard a humming sound, then he strummed me.

The effect was astonishing. I felt power flow through me and my voice boomed. As he strummed and plucked strings, I shouted notes and chords. 

He wasn’t very good and nothing I said sounded more than baby talk. Finally his mom came in and said something about supper and music lesson tomorrow.

###

Me and the kid sat in a semicircle of about a dozen other kids, all with guitars. An older guy came in; he also had one.

I heard talk about scales, notes, chords. Something about low and high E strings. The older guy plucked and strummed and the kids tried to do what he did.

One week, the older guy was trying to get the kid to play something, but the kid couldn’t. He blamed me. The guy took me from the kid. He paused, then did something that shook me from my head to my bridge. 

His fingers flew up and down my fretboard while he used a pick on my strings with his other hand. For the first time, I learned what I was capable of. The notes that I produced… music… were beautiful, astonishing. High soaring ones with a strange vibrato. Low guttural ones with a choppy effect. Chords that matched somehow, all mixed together in a glorious assembly of sound.

I wanted more. The kid sullenly took me back. 

That week, he hardly played me at all. When he did, it was the same stuff he had played earlier, not what the older guy had played. He didn’t go the class any more.

I was played less and less until I was no longer played at all. I sat in my stand for months, gathering dust. One day I heard his dad say something about taxes and donations, and I was taken to a place filled with junky stuff that smelled musty. Someone stuck a tag on me.

###

For years, the cycle repeated; I was bought, played by people with varying degrees of proficiency, then resold. Sometimes it was to friends, sometimes to stores with other musical instruments, sometimes to the junky, musty places.

Once I was bought by a kid who was in a band. They practiced in his garage. There was another guitar that played only low notes, a keyboard and a drum set. 

They practiced every afternoon. One day they played in front of about a hundred other kids. Even with all the practice, the music wasn’t very good; there was some scattered applause. I went into the kid’s closet where I stayed until I lost track of time.

###

I was bought again by a guy in another music store. He brought me to a place filled with seats, curtains, a stage and lights. There were the boxes, but unlike the little ones I was used to, these were gigantic. 

Four people were there every day, a very pretty woman and three guys. Like the kids in the garage, they also practiced every day, only they were very good. I was never played, I lived in my owner’s room backstage. He played me when there was nothing else going on; he was so-so.

Sometimes I heard the low-pitched humming of many voices, and bits and pieces of music. I heard the woman’s voice, and people cheering. I wished I could see what was going on.

We moved from place to place and my owner helped set up and take down stuff. It got to be routine; the same thing, just in different places.

We came to a place I heard them call  Nashville and they started setting up; my owner had left me on the side of the stage. Suddenly, the lady tripped on a wire and fell. The neck of her guitar snapped and broke. 

There was a lot of shouting about doors open in 10 and who left that wire there and other stuff I didn’t understand. My owner grabbed me and handed me to the lady.

Something strange happened.

In her hands, there was something about her… I can’t explain it, I’d never felt it with any of the other people who had ever held me. She had this glow around her that lit her up…that lit me up as well… but nobody else seemed to see it. I heard…felt, really… music, but it was coming from inside her somehow. 

Her hands were gentle and she attached a strap to me. She strummed me a few times, then plugged me into the box and then played a brief bit of one of their songs.

The thunderous wave of sound that came from the box shook me to my core. In the lady’s hands, I briefly made music that put to shame the teacher all those years ago. It was all too much; it was like I was watching myself somehow, like it wasn’t really me making that music.

She patted me. “You got this,” she murmured. It was the first time anybody had spoken directly to me. 

The curtains opened and the crowd cheered. The bright lights dazzled me; I recalled the bearded music store guy all those years ago when my case was opened for the first time.

The lady tapped the mic and said a few words. More cheering and applause. She half-turned to the band, then stomped her foot four times. Then the band erupted in an explosion of sound.

It was unreal. The lady touched me, plucked me, picked me, strummed me and my notes soared higher and higher, to the rafters. Her voice matched my notes and the effect was indescribable. I could only see people in the front row because of all the lights, but they were going wild. Her inside music flowed out of her and through me somehow.

Some songs were loud and fast-tempo, others less so. The ones I liked best were the ones where the lights went down and there was only one spotlight on the lady and me. She played me very softly and her high, clear voice made some of the people in the front row wipe their eyes.

Finally the curtains closed and the band mopped their foreheads with towels. As the lady put me on a stand, she squeezed my neck. “You did alright, tonight, Sparks,” she said. “I think I’ll keep you.”

### 

Many years went by. The band finally broke up and the lady retired to a place in the mountains. Her hair had turned to snow but she still took me out on the porch every morning and played me as she had her morning coffee. The views of the mountains marching off in the distance as she sang in her sweet, clear voice filled me with contentment. 

One day her granddaughter came to visit. She picked me up and I instantly felt that she had the inside music as well. She played me and sang and it was though time had turned back to my first stage appearance all those years ago. Her grandmother smiled.

###

One afternoon as her granddaughter sat listening, the lady played me. 

Then something strange happened. I felt something deep inside her burst with a faint pop. She slumped back in her chair. Her inside music stopped and I felt that she was no longer aware of me, of her granddaughter, of anything. Her granddaughter screamed.

A minute or two later, I felt something beautiful leave her; her glow, her inside music, the voice that I had grown to love. It went out of her with a sigh and moved toward a light that had appeared above the mountains.

Her granddaughter cried and hugged her as other people came rushing outside. But it was no use; she was gone.

###

Weeks later, her granddaughter stood behind a curtain, holding me, as I heard the familiar sound of a filling stadium. She patted me gently. “You ready, Sparks?” she asked.

I heard her grandmother as plain as day.

You got this.

©My little corner of the world 2024