PROSE2

by: ekta parab

PROSE

2

1

The girl stood in front of the tall white columns of the college building grasping

a thick stack of sheet music in her left hand and rhythmically drumming her fingers on the side of her violin case. Every one of her breaths was shaky and unsatisfactory. The noise of the busy cars and hustling people on the street behind her was drowned out by the beat of her heart, deafening in her ears. But the nervous thumping set the beat of the music. The earsplitting music that ran through her head and never stopped.

She pulled her long red scarf tighter around her neck as the ice autumn wind prodded through her hair and made her toes cringe in their socks. A few people marched around her, hurrying into the tall brick building as skipping leaves chased them inside. The conglomeration of uncompromising stress, cold Boston air, and mass of fast focused minds continuously wrapped itself around the girl like a constricting snake. Suffocating her spine. Squeezing her thoughts into tiny rising bubbles on the brink of bursting into millions of hyper extended words. Like a malfunctioning search engine. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to concentrate on the loud music that spo-radically circulated back and forth in her head. The columns cast snide shadows across her body. The girl with the red scarf took a deep breath and focused her atten-tion on the beat of her heart before she started into the building. But the constricting snake followed her inside.

“Yes how may I help you,” the tired secretary stated to her computer screen.“Uh, I’m here for an audition,” the girl said a little too loudly. She drummed her fingers against the violin case and secretly scolded herself. The lady silently handed her a clipboard, and without looking up from the

screen said, “Sign this then wait in the room to your left.”The girl with the red scarf signed the clipboard and made her way to a cushioned

chair in the corner of the wallpapered waiting room. She sat in silence for about ten minutes as other young musicians filed in with their instrument cases in hand, taking their seats. No one said a word, but judgmental glances were shot across the room like fiery bullets. The girl in the red scarf was especially the target of these icy stares. She had a reputation. She’d been playing since she was a toddler. She was good.

THE GIRL IN THE RED SCARF

BY: MICHELLE VATRAL

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A door opened from across the room, and a tall porcelain faced lady with straight blonde hair peered down at a list, and through her tiny square glasses read out the name of the girl in the red scarf. She got up quickly, the music gaining sudden velocity as her heart began to rapidly beat, each interval closer together. The girl took brisk steps toward the door, but her body suddenly became extremely heavy. The weight of the snake that followed her inside pulled tighter around her torso.

She followed the blonde lady down a hallway into a large professional audito-rium with rows and rows of velvety blue seats and a massive orchestra pit. The stage was brightly lit, the classic black curtains pulled back and smooth wood paneling freshly painted. The girl shed her brown coat on one of the chairs as she walked down the aisle, trying to keep up with the blonde lady. She kept her red scarf, though, and pulled it snugly around her neck as she began to ascend the stairs of the stage. A fold-ing chair and music stand sat lonesome in the middle of the platform. The girl took her seat and began to unlatch her violin case. The music played wildly in her head, like a warring storm of strings and brass. The volume was so thunderous she almost didn’t hear an older gentlemen’s voice say, “Welcome to the Berklee College of Music. As you may know, I am Gabriel Simons, and I will be judging your instrumental audition into our orchestra scholarship program.”

The girl in the red scarf stood and tried to manage her most polite smile. As she greeted the other judges and placed the sheet music on the stand in front of her, some-thing bright caught her eye. A gold pendant in the shape of a crescent moon was clasped onto the sweater of one of the judges seated in the front row. It reminded her of her mother. Immediately she was taken back to those long afternoons spent in the warm kitchen, practicing her violin as her mother cooked dinner, humming along and critiquing every note and string as the girl pushed and pulled her bow for hours on end. Her mother’s flashy gold jewelry hung amidst her neck and brittle wrists as she prepared her famous homemade dishes. The girl always remembered her mother be-ing very thin. When the girl watched her mother bend over to retrieve pots out of the bottom cupboard or reach up to give her father his daily subtle kiss, her mother’s back-bones would jut out and her thick sleeves would fall down, revealing her starving phy-sique. But, at the time, none of this ever occurred to the girl as a problem. It wasn’t un-til after she died that the girl realized something had been wrong.

“You may begin now.” The voice startled her out of her thought process, and the girl jerked a little. Her

reflections scattered as she robotically put her violin in position. She pulled her red

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scarf tighter and held her bow in the air, straightening her posture and thoughts as her heart beat stridently in her ears.

In the back of her mind she heard her mother saying, “And one and two and three and four…”

And then she began to play. The music started out soft and sad but gained speed as the song went on. She

moved to the beat, imaginary dancers in large sweeping dresses spun across the stage around her in style and elegance. But it wasn’t perfect. Nothing was ever perfect. She watched the judges as they scribbled down things on their papers and peered at her be-neath their seemingly large furrowed brows. As she played, her mother’s soft voice be-gan to disappear. It was replaced by her father’s deep tone. He didn’t talk much. Espe-cially after her mother died. But the things he did say were unforgettable. After one late night out, her father stumbled in stinking drunk and smelling of sweat and ciga-rettes. He mumbled to her, “You made her sick. I tried my best to help her. It wasn’t my fault. You made her sick with that stupid violin. She was obsessed, and it killed her. Now you’re obsessed.”

The words stung in the back of the girl’s mind as she continued to play. Suddenly she skipped a note. Suddenly she missed a beat. One judge looked up at her and held his gaze. His dark hazel eyes suddenly reminding her of her father’s. She began to panic. She started playing faster and faster. Rushing the song. Wishing it was over.

“If I have to hear that boring music one more time…” her father grumbled as he walked past her bedroom.

“Just give it up,” he said as he flipped the TV on. “I’m gonna break that noise maker in half if you don’t quit that racket,” he threat-

ened.The girl in the red scarf felt a drop of sweat as it ran down her forehead and into

the corner of her eye. Suddenly she was dying of heat and thirst. One more refrain she whispered. The music echoed in her ears and her heart beat grew more reckless than ever before. She went a little too sharp on a note, and another droplet cascaded down her anguished face. The snake whipped its tail around her torso and strained its mus-cles against her lungs, constricting her breath. But, she was almost to the end. At the crescendo of the piece she told herself this is who she was. This is what her mother wanted. If she ruined this, she would ruin everything. Her mother would never forgive her. As she played the last notes, shadowy memories played in the back of her mind; the image of her mother’s small feet dangling above the bedroom hardwood floor. The rope wrapped tightly around the tall bedframe post. Her mother’s dangly gold jewelry

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hung midair before falling onto the ground in slow motion and shattering into a mil-lion pieces. The snake squeezed. The music pierced her ears, and her head felt like ex-ploding. She gasped for air and finally set down her bow. Tears swam in her eyes.

The judges clapped quietly. She sat up and wiped her face. “Thank you very much. We will be in touch.”She put away her violin, gathered her things, and picked up her coat as she

walked out the door. The heat of the auditorium stifled around the girl in the red scarf and she broke out into a run as she passed through the lobby, pulling her scarf tighter, so close to suffocation. The secretary looked up from her screen as the girl ran by and roughly pushed through the doors to the outside.

Once back in the cool late afternoon air, she could breathe. She stood there for a minute, letting her body cool off as she closed her eyes and told herself everything would be okay. Then she went to a nearby bench and sat down, her red scarf hung limp around her brittle neck.

She sat for a long time. Just breathing. Watching the world as it moved around her. Everything seemed contrastingly slower than when she first arrived at the street corner. Cars moved lethargically down the road and business men strode in easy un-rushed step. Her back and arms relaxed onto the cold wooden seat. Beams of sunshine dipped out from behind the gray clouds, and the girl reminisced on summer days she spent as a child. Sitting in the back yard with her mother and father. Talking to her mom about anything and everything as her dad cooked on the grill and told jokes that made them laugh. Before it all fell apart.

A bus with a freshly plastered advertisement for sports equipment screeched by and the girl looked up from her fixed gaze. In bold black letters the poster read: LOVE WHO YOU ARE. LOVE WHAT YOU DO.

The words resonated within the girl, and she sat and thought about it for a long time. She thought about the day she moved out. When she left her father to live alone in his hole of smothering regret and endless frustration. She thought about her violin. And how she would play nonstop, late into the night until her fingers bled. And she would think about her mother the whole time.

The girl in the red scarf looked down at her violin case, which was propped against the bench. So lifeless and empty. Devoid of any human emotion. A barren co-matose object. She swiftly picked it up, walked over to a nearby trashcan, and dropped it in. She walked away and didn’t look back.

As she skipped down the street, the snake began to release its pressure and un-coil itself, sluggishly slithering away. The erratic music died to nothing. Her ears were

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full of peaceful silence except for one sound: She heard her mother say, “And one and two and three and four…” and then the girl pulled off her red scarf and let it go in the wind. She watched as it flew away and frolicked down the busy street, a beautiful sym-phony of color as it spun around with the yellow and orange autumn leaves.

Her phone rang as she danced down the sidewalk. “Hello?... Yes this is Wendy…” she answered with a smile.

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7

by: michelle vatral

About 13.8 billion years ago, something began to write a story. What this some-

thing is, we'll never know. Perhaps a quiet teenage boy sitting at his desk on a Friday night wondering where his life will take him, or perhaps an old woman on her death-bed, reminiscing over the paths she chose.

It is of little matter.

But there are things we can deduce of this writer by the story they have created. They are unsure. Insecure of their ability to craft a story. They are sure that, if they had enough time, they would be able to make something readable, but there is never enough time for a writer.

So they sit, pondering for hours before advancing the storyline bit by bit. Fore-shadowing, character development, a few metaphors here and there, can't forget those. They are wordy, but still manage to keep the plot moving along.

But eventually the writer finished. Perhaps the boy began to become tired and chose sleep, perhaps the old woman was chosen by the sleep.

It is of little matter.

For they loved their story. Every character, every plot twist, every play on words they had to stop and think of, every tiny piece of it. It was the most important thing in their lives, and most likely still is, for the story had a life all its own, and it loved the writer.

But stories are unsure. Insecure of their ability to be loved. Insecure of their abil-ity to be alive.

THE WRITER

BY: SAMMY SMITH

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The writer of course, never liked that. But what are they to do? No matter how hard you try, you cannot talk to a character in a story, nor can you go back and change it, for that would bring its death.

So the writer added one line to the end of the script.

“You Must Find Strength Within Yourself”

This line has scared me the most.Not because of the loneliness it entails.But because so few characters believe it.So every time I turn the page.I cry for 3 reasons.One, that I have yet to follow the writer’s advice.Two, the realization that I am important to the story.And three, that you have yet to realize the same.

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The House has always resided on the Black marsh since anyone in Piedmont,

Louisiana could remember. No one truly knows when it was built; there are too many distinct features to decipher the House’s place of origin. The House has an outward ap-pearance of a Southern Antebellum plantation home. However, instead of an eggshell white color to highlight the house, there is a mixture of black mold and swamp-green moss which seemed to cover almost every inch of the house, like sins on a soul. There are also see Greek marble statues strewn carelessly across the wall, their emotions por-traying love, fear, rage, hatred and other grotesque displays of emotions. Countless mo-saics plaster the outside walls giving off a plethora of bright and beautiful colors which stood in contrast to the all-consuming darkness. The pictures on the wall depict a vari-ety of scenes. A madman plays a fiddle while a woman accused falsely of being a witch burns at the stake. A milkman whose skin is as dark as coffee beans runs from an army of men dressed as ghosts who want to kill him for simply looking at one of their women the wrong way. Two small girls dressed in ocean blue dresses playing a game of hide and seek while a woman in white looks on past the children, a strange smile on her face and her hands held behind her back revealing nothing. These components of the house have a tendency to keep away strangers; in fact no one has looked upon the house in years….except for Billie Sander.

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Billie Sander was the kind of teenager many people wanted to be friends with and also wanted to hate. His family had millions of dollars due to his family’s monop-oly over the fishing business, which allowed Billie anything he wanted, including par-ties, cars, girls and friends. It also made him selfish and arrogant; coupled with his ex-treme height, thinness and straw blond hair, he was referred to behind his back as “the Scarecrow”. That didn’t bother Billie though; he also called himself Scarecrow, for a different reason. Billie enjoyed fear, loved it really. Ever since he was a boy, he loved not only bringing fear to others, but also to himself. Anything fear related was like a rush of ecstasy to Billie; he couldn’t get enough of it. He used pranks, costumes and

THE HOUSE ON BLACK MARSH

BY: JAKE HARVEY

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even real threats to get the satisfaction of seeing his friends scared. Still… something was lacking for Billie. Fear was not as satisfying as it once was. What he needed was a new thrill, a new scare. Something that others before him would never try, never dream to do.

Billie got his chance. On Friday October 29th, Billie was sitting with some of his

friends, discussing what they would do on Halloween. Many were watching a scary movie marathon on AMC, others actually going trick or treating. These trivial back and forth conversations continued until Matt Dobson, the new kid, said: “Hey guys, what’s up with the weird house out on the swamp?”

No one said anything. They shuffled their feet and slowly turned their eyes down-

wards. Billie sighed, and in an exasperated tone explained: “The house you are referring

to, Matt, is a local legend and nothing you need to concern yourself with. Now what we need to deal with is our new Halloween prank. This year I propose we-”

“Now hold on Billie,” interjected Tom Hader, one of Billie’s oldest friends, “There is nothing normal about that house. I mean, don’t you know about all that crazy stuff that has gone on there? Don’t you know about the deaths and murders?”

Billie didn’t say anything. Of course he knew all about the house; he even did a paper on the murders in the 7th grade which earned him an A (and a trip to the guid-ance counselor). The real reason that he didn’t speak was because he could not believe that Tom had the gall to interrupt him. Billie thought with rage: How dare that little cretin interrupt me!

Some of the boys told Matt Dobson about the other legends of the house; their eyes gleamed with excitement and fear.

“Yeah, Matt. There have been plenty of crazy stuff that occurred around there like the woman getting burned at stake three hundred years ago. A crazy old man played the fiddle on the house when she roasted alive. Plus, about a hundred fifty years back, some dumb aristocratic woman wanted to live in the house. Can you be-lieve that? She ended up going crazy and butchered her kids with a carving knife.”

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“Ohh,” Matt said, his skin beginning to turn pale as chalk.

“Or the milkman who got lynched by the K.K.K a few decades ago,” Jackson Grady interjected, “Apparently this poor guy like made out with a white woman. The Klan brought him down like a dog. He tried to find refuge in the house, but the Klan took him out by force and lynched him on the spot. The cops found his body hanging on the porch.”

“Wow,” Matt Dobson said, feeling sick to his stomach and beginning to regret ever speaking of the house. Before he could speak, the rest of guys bring up gruesome stories they learned as children.

“And there was that killing of that jock and cheerleader twenty years ago. They found their bodies rotting in the swamp.”

“And then there was that time when that girl drowned in the swamp…ohh what’s her name? Tom, she was your sister. What was her na-” The boy could not finish be-fore Billie swung his thin wiry hand across his face. The boy stared at Billie with mo-mentary confusion, which quickly turned into rage. He lunged forward as if to kill Bil-lie, only to be blocked by Billie Haders’ hand.

“No,” Tom whispered fiercely, “if you hit him, we will all get in trouble. Not to mention it would mess up our…Halloween plan.” Tom shared a knowing look with the boy. The boy nodded and sighed.

“Everyone shut up and listen!” Billie bellowed boldly, his face contorted in anger. He had had enough of this moronic conversation. The last one who spoke skirted away from Billie as if in an attempt to avoid Billie’s wrath. Tom Hader’s face was like a stone: smooth and unreadable. Billie calmed down and said: “It is just a house, you guys. Sure some bad stuff may have happened there, but that doesn’t make it super-natural or cursed. You all just need to chill the heck out.”

Nobody said a word for a few minutes. Then, Tom mumbled something, infuriat-ing Billie. Billie engaged in conversation with Tom.

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“What was that Tom? I didn’t hear you.” “I said it’s easy for you to say that; you’ve never been there.”

“Maybe, but your dumb sister did. What was her name again? Mary? Megan? “Mallory,” Tom said quietly, “Her name was Mallory.” “Whatever,” Billie continued, as he snorted at the thought of her drowning in the

swamp, earning himself a few hidden glares from the rest of his cohorts, “She shouldn’t have been stupid and gone out to the House at night. I mean, she was practi-cally begging to die.”

“You know you talk real big Billie. But honestly, I think you could never be as brave as her.”

Billie replied: “Or as stupid.” Billie smirked maliciously. Tom Hader, on the other hand, maintained a neutral tone and an unreadable ex-

pression when he said: “You think you’re tough? Why don’t you spend the whole night there on Halloween?”

Billie didn’t say anything. In truth, the idea of going to the House, let alone actu-ally spending the whole night there appalled him. But then… a thought came into his mind. Why shouldn’t I do it? Nothing scares me, nothing. I’ll do it and not only will I prove to these morons that I am the bravest, but I bet with my father’s connections I could go on TV. Maybe even become famous.

Tom Hader waited. A smirk slid across his lips for the first time. “Well what will

it be… Scarecrow?” Billie blinked out of his fantasy and glared at Tom. “All right, Tom, I accept your

challenge. And I’ll prove to you all how much better I am than you… and your sister.”

Both boys shook hands, each trying to hurt the other in the hand shake to the point that the white of their knuckles began to show.

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Billie convinced his parents to let him go out with very little effort. They feared him, feared what he had done to other people and were afraid that he might do some-thing horrendous to them. It was out of fear, not love, that made them acquiesce to his request. Billie arrived alone to the House around 11:00 P.M. on Halloween. He was covered in black and had a camera, his cellphone, a few cans of coke, a sandwich, a novel by H.P. Lovecraft, a sleeping bag and a pocket knife. The rules of the bet were that he had to film himself outside the house and inside for the entire night. If he left the house then he proved his cowardice. Billie swore to himself that no matter what, he would not leave the House. “I’ll show them,” Billie said, “I’ll show them all.” Billie gazed darkly at the House, observing the darkness and beauty mixed so evenly. The front door slowly opened backwards on its own, startling Billie. A few moments passed until Billie regained his nerve. Slowly but determinedly, Billie went into the house. The solid black door closed shut behind, leaving behind a foreboding wall of shadows and the ever present sound of silence.

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Billie Sander’s body was found atop the roof of the House on November 1st: All Saint’s day, his body rigid, his mouth agape, with a swollen purple tongue protruding out and his arms spread out like some grotesque crucifix. Only… he didn’t look the same. He was dressed in blue overalls, a red and black checkered shirt and a straw hat on the top of his head. His face was covered by a horrible brown mask that seemed to express the epitome of fear. Crow feathers’ laid at his feet. The coroner took off the mask to get a better look at Billie’s face; the coroner still has nightmares to this day. There was no evidence… his camera was destroyed and none of his friend said what happened (and didn’t seem to care). When the police arrived for questioning, the boys were actually happy at what had occurred. They glanced at each other, Tom Hader es-pecially, like they had an inside joke and only they knew the punch line. This bothered the police, but in the end, even they didn’t care (Billie Sander was a bane to the Pied-mont police force while he was alive anyway.)

In fact no one cared, not really; they all came to the funeral, they saw the mahog-any coffin, and they left him for the worms. His parents spared a few tears for the cam-eras, while they hide their relief of not being harmed by Billie. After the funeral it was

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quiet in the town of Piedmont. That is, until a new mosaic appeared on the house. It showed a boy dressed in black running away in pure terror, his eyes filled with the fear that he so desperately wanted to inflict on others. He was hunted down by those he called his “friends”, with Tom Hader leading the charge, wild eyed and wielding a hatchet as he brought it down upon Billie Sander’s skull. The oddest feature though, is at the corner of the mosaic. Figures are noticeable, yet ignored, by the boy in black and his murderers. A woman dressed in white, a fiddler, a milk man and a young teenager with the letters M. H. stitched on her pink and moss stained sweater stared at the spec-tacle. They all had an air of happiness about them, as if welcoming Billie into the fam-ily. In the end, Billie Sander was just another soul taken by the House.

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The House has always resided on the Black Marsh… and with a little help from fear and human cruelty, so will Billie Sander.

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Everyone has a private twilight zone, a place that transcends reality to another place, another time, and another blip on the map of sweet dreams. Jesse and Marga-ret share such a place.

Gran, the family nickname for Elizabeth Grania Pittman, fell into her feather

bed, January 6, 1996, before the moon settled over the horizon, between the creek bot-tom and peanut fields bordering the Georgia-Alabama line. She roasted her last fat dove for dinner, finished off the pot of collards, and soaked her sweet cornbread in a cup of buttermilk for dessert. She was well with the world, when she pressed her Sun-day dress, and laid it across the chaise for tomorrow’s 9 am service. As she rubbed her heart through her worn granny gown, straightened her hairnet, and snuggled into Jesse’s old army socks, contentment stretched across her face.

Becoming one with the feather-bed’s soft holy quilt, Gran pulled Jesse’s socks over her boney, knees and melted all the wrinkles together. Gran had secretly hidden Jesse’s socks when he furloughed the Christmas before his 1969 deployment to Viet-nam. She pampered those socks, kept them in an ebony box, next to her bed, under her Bible. She hand-washed them in Ivory Snow. When she hung them in the Alabama sunshine, she pretended that Jesse was inside the house, playing his guitar, and sing-ing about the South. For brief moments, his socks helped her forget about the Godless war, in the Godless jungle, that infected her only child with malaria, and taught him how to drink and swear away his nightmares. When Jesse was gone, she pretended that wearing Jesse’s socks on her feet would keep him warm at night. Jesse told her later that no one wore socks after a first night in the jungle.

“I know it’s hard, Jesse, but the rats are having their way in Gran’s house. It just isn’t right. Seventeen years…come on now…”says Margaret, as her Neiman Marcus heals dig into the soft earth. She mutters to herself that she shouldn’t have worn her Ralph Lauren suit either. She has forgotten how to exist without designers, sidewalks, concrete, and iPads.

JESSE’S PLACE

BY: MARCIE MITCHELL

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“OK, Margaret. I know. I know. For a third cousin, you aren’t so bad, you know.” He smiles in her direction. “I just don’t have anybody else…this is really tough for me.” Jesse mumbles and kicks a beer can across the overgrown yard.

Hesitantly, they walk toward Gran’s house. Margaret glances at the keys still in the ignition of the 1970 Pontiac, still parked in the dilapidated carriage house, now leaning against Uncle George’s prize fig tree. Margaret remembers how Gran used Un-cle George’s life insurance money to buy that car for Jesse, a surprise for his return from the war. She only drove it to church on Sunday to show everybody that Jesse wasn’t home yet. She faced the cousins to ride in the back, with the windows rolled up, to make everyone think that the canary yellow convertible GTO was air-conditioned. The congregation giggled silently as the cousins dripped sweat into the Baptist hym-nals, but Bethel townsfolk would never speak against Gran or Jesse. They were more like kin than neighbors. Gran refused to let the convertible top down until Jesse came home.

Jesse opens the unlocked door and holds it ajar for Margaret. She takes a long breath before stepping into Jesse’s zone.

“What’s that smell?” She asks.“It’s just dust and mold,” Jesse defends under his breath.“Oh, God. Jesse, this is worse than I expected. You should have called me for

help years ago. Atlanta is only a couple of hours away. I would have come.”Margaret glances around before her eyes stall on the clear plastic covers, now

cracked and peeled away from the once perfect settee. “Jesse, you remember how we used to stick to that sofa in the summer? Gran made us sit like little statues and drink coffee with milk. We’d sneak the sugar cubes out of that candy dish on the table. Oh, God, it’s still there. This is creepy, Jesse.”

“I’m sorry, Margaret, I should have told you that I haven’t moved anything since momma passed over. I try to come over once a year or so. I had a lady down the road who kept an eye on things for me. She used to clean a little. I don’t know exactly how long it’s been.”

“From the dust and the rat droppings, I’d say she hasn’t cleaned in years, Jesse.”“Miss May Belle is dead now, too. I don’t know how long…it’s been a while. I

guess I should have found someone else, but there’s not many folks left ‘round here.” Jesse reaches for his cane to steady himself, as his eyes roll from door to door. He hesi-tates and begins to shake a little as he stares at the picture of himself in his dress uni-form. He posed for it at church the Christmas before he left for the jungle. Gran used

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to tell people that the image of Jesse in her living room was the REAL Jesse, not the OTHER Jesse.

“Do you need something to drink, Jesse? Maybe some water? I have some in my car.”

“I’ll wait, Margaret. I think we might both need something stronger than your fancy water before nightfall. Let’s just do this. I always feel kinda sick when I ‘m in here. “

Margaret pulls her video camera from her pocket. She checks the battery as she says, “Jesse, I think the best way to do this is to video tape everything, room by room. It’s too difficult to write it all down now. I can do that when I get back to Atlanta. Then I can do a proper inventory for the auctioneer.” Margaret frowns as she steps into the hallway outside the kitchen. “We can start videotaping in the kitchen, if you want.”

Jesse nods, shuffles his feet through the dusty hallway, and stops in the middle of the kitchen. He rests against the long farm table before he says, “Margaret, I love you. Thanks for coming.”

Margaret hides her tear from Jesse as she pretends to fumble with the camera set-tings. “Oh this is a piece of cake, Jesse. I do this kind of inventory all the time. Don’t you worry a bit. I will have this done before you know it. I have office staff who can help when I get back to the city. It’s all good, Jesse.”

Margaret’s mind wanders to the farm table. She thinks about how they gathered on canning days. Gran directed everyone. Everyone had a job. Some picked, some washed, some prepared jars, some stirred, and some made labels. Canning days lasted all summer and into the fall. Gran always stock-piled special cans for holidays and gifts. Margaret notices the pantry, still filled with jars of food and homemade muscad-ine wine. Folded pieces of saved tinfoil still sit on the counter, and old TV trays sit on the dry sink under the window.

The kitchen looks like Gran didn’t have time to straighten up before she went to bed. That was unusual for Gran; she was usually a perfectionist.

Margaret feels dizzy, so she sits at the table with her head in her hands for a min-ute. When she raises her head and reclips her long hair, she cuts her eyes toward Jesse. He stares at the long farm table as Margaret feels along the bottom of the table’s center drawer. Jesse’s and Margaret’s eyes lock. She carefully retrieves the note that she had slipped into the crack of the table decades ago, the week after their gradua-tion, right before Jesse left home. She looks at Jesse. He remembers, too.

“Is it still there, Margaret?”“Yes, it is, Jesse. Should we?”

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“I think we should. But, let’s take it to my room. Gran left it just the way you re-member it.”

They stare in silence for a long Southern minute before they move simultane-ously toward the door. Jesse’s room is still closed and locked. He reaches above the door frame and feels along the dusty shelf, until the key drops into his sweaty palm.

Margaret remembers, but she is not prepared. She stops short, removes her high heels, and barely catches her breath. Jesse’s old bedroom is exactly the way she re-members. His baseball cap hangs from the bedpost, his jersey rests folded across the chair, and the Polaroid of them together at the creek remains tacked to the closet door. Jesse’s school folders lay open on the desk, along with his diploma, his graduation an-nouncements, and the key to his lockbox at the bank. She still has his spare car keys and lockbox on the keychain in her purse. His curtains, although ragged and faded, still show their school colors and reflect their University of Alabama kinship. Jesse’s creek boots, caked with mud and dust, sit in the corner next to his walking stick and backpack, the one his father, Uncle George Pittman, gave Jesse from an Army surplus store, a week before his hunting accident in 1968. Jesse’s first guitar and a stack of old records lay strewn on the floor in front of his record player, just the way they left them that last night.

Margaret stares at the coal fireplace across from Jesse’s double bed and motions to Jesse by cutting her eyes in his direction. They still communicate without words, something they practiced in the woods and creeks during hunting season. Jesse moves toward the fireplace; they both sit cross-legged on the floor, as if in ritual. She stares at Jesse, and before he says a word, they both smile affectionately.

“It feels like yesterday.” Jesse says through his grin.“What the heck happened to us, Jesse? I wonder…what the heck… Margaret

pauses in seriousness before she unfolds the paper. ”We should have done this as soon as you came home.”

“You weren’t here, Margaret. You went off to that girl’s school. Remember?”“I’m sorry, Jesse. I know you needed me. I needed you, too. I feel guilty, espe-

cially now…”“Don’t, Margaret. Just don’t talk about it…We need to take care of this.” They both read the note silently before Jesse pulls a lighter from his sagging

jeans. He wastes no time clicking a flame into the ready position. Margaret gazes into the fireplace, as if she’s studying an apparition. She holds the paper with both hands until it catches fire, and when it burns halfway, she releases it into the dusty coals.

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Jesse remains motionless as the paper disintegrates before them into the dust, as if it never existed.

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The girl stood in front of the tall white columns of the college building grasping

a thick stack of sheet music in her left hand and rhythmically drumming her fingers on the side of her violin case. Every one of her breaths was shaky and unsatisfactory. The noise of the busy cars and hustling people on the street behind her was drowned out by the beat of her heart, deafening in her ears. But the nervous thumping set the beat of the music. The earsplitting music that ran through her head and never stopped.

She pulled her long red scarf tighter around her neck as the ice autumn wind prodded through her hair and made her toes cringe in their socks. A few people marched around her, hurrying into the tall brick building as skipping leaves chased them inside. The conglomeration of uncompromising stress, cold Boston air, and mass of fast focused minds continuously wrapped itself around the girl like a constricting snake. Suffocating her spine. Squeezing her thoughts into tiny rising bubbles on the brink of bursting into millions of hyper extended words. Like a malfunctioning search engine. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to concentrate on the loud music that spo-radically circulated back and forth in her head. The columns cast snide shadows across her body. The girl with the red scarf took a deep breath and focused her atten-tion on the beat of her heart before she started into the building. But the constricting snake followed her inside.

“Yes how may I help you,” the tired secretary stated to her computer screen.“Uh, I’m here for an audition,” the girl said a little too loudly. She drummed her fingers against the violin case and secretly scolded herself. The lady silently handed her a clipboard, and without looking up from the

screen said, “Sign this then wait in the room to your left.”The girl with the red scarf signed the clipboard and made her way to a cushioned

chair in the corner of the wallpapered waiting room. She sat in silence for about ten minutes as other young musicians filed in with their instrument cases in hand, taking their seats. No one said a word, but judgmental glances were shot across the room like fiery bullets. The girl in the red scarf was especially the target of these icy stares. She had a reputation. She’d been playing since she was a toddler. She was good.

THE GIRL IN THE RED SCARF

BY: MICHELLE VATRAL

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A door opened from across the room, and a tall porcelain faced lady with straight blonde hair peered down at a list, and through her tiny square glasses read out the name of the girl in the red scarf. She got up quickly, the music gaining sudden velocity as her heart began to rapidly beat, each interval closer together. The girl took brisk steps toward the door, but her body suddenly became extremely heavy. The weight of the snake that followed her inside pulled tighter around her torso.

She followed the blonde lady down a hallway into a large professional audito-rium with rows and rows of velvety blue seats and a massive orchestra pit. The stage was brightly lit, the classic black curtains pulled back and smooth wood paneling freshly painted. The girl shed her brown coat on one of the chairs as she walked down the aisle, trying to keep up with the blonde lady. She kept her red scarf, though, and pulled it snugly around her neck as she began to ascend the stairs of the stage. A fold-ing chair and music stand sat lonesome in the middle of the platform. The girl took her seat and began to unlatch her violin case. The music played wildly in her head, like a warring storm of strings and brass. The volume was so thunderous she almost didn’t hear an older gentlemen’s voice say, “Welcome to the Berklee College of Music. As you may know, I am Gabriel Simons, and I will be judging your instrumental audition into our orchestra scholarship program.”

The girl in the red scarf stood and tried to manage her most polite smile. As she greeted the other judges and placed the sheet music on the stand in front of her, some-thing bright caught her eye. A gold pendant in the shape of a crescent moon was clasped onto the sweater of one of the judges seated in the front row. It reminded her of her mother. Immediately she was taken back to those long afternoons spent in the warm kitchen, practicing her violin as her mother cooked dinner, humming along and critiquing every note and string as the girl pushed and pulled her bow for hours on end. Her mother’s flashy gold jewelry hung amidst her neck and brittle wrists as she prepared her famous homemade dishes. The girl always remembered her mother be-ing very thin. When the girl watched her mother bend over to retrieve pots out of the bottom cupboard or reach up to give her father his daily subtle kiss, her mother’s back-bones would jut out and her thick sleeves would fall down, revealing her starving phy-sique. But, at the time, none of this ever occurred to the girl as a problem. It wasn’t un-til after she died that the girl realized something had been wrong.

“You may begin now.” The voice startled her out of her thought process, and the girl jerked a little. Her

reflections scattered as she robotically put her violin in position. She pulled her red

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scarf tighter and held her bow in the air, straightening her posture and thoughts as her heart beat stridently in her ears.

In the back of her mind she heard her mother saying, “And one and two and three and four…”

And then she began to play. The music started out soft and sad but gained speed as the song went on. She

moved to the beat, imaginary dancers in large sweeping dresses spun across the stage around her in style and elegance. But it wasn’t perfect. Nothing was ever perfect. She watched the judges as they scribbled down things on their papers and peered at her be-neath their seemingly large furrowed brows. As she played, her mother’s soft voice be-gan to disappear. It was replaced by her father’s deep tone. He didn’t talk much. Espe-cially after her mother died. But the things he did say were unforgettable. After one late night out, her father stumbled in stinking drunk and smelling of sweat and ciga-rettes. He mumbled to her, “You made her sick. I tried my best to help her. It wasn’t my fault. You made her sick with that stupid violin. She was obsessed, and it killed her. Now you’re obsessed.”

The words stung in the back of the girl’s mind as she continued to play. Suddenly she skipped a note. Suddenly she missed a beat. One judge looked up at her and held his gaze. His dark hazel eyes suddenly reminding her of her father’s. She began to panic. She started playing faster and faster. Rushing the song. Wishing it was over.

“If I have to hear that boring music one more time…” her father grumbled as he walked past her bedroom.

“Just give it up,” he said as he flipped the TV on. “I’m gonna break that noise maker in half if you don’t quit that racket,” he threat-

ened.The girl in the red scarf felt a drop of sweat as it ran down her forehead and into

the corner of her eye. Suddenly she was dying of heat and thirst. One more refrain she whispered. The music echoed in her ears and her heart beat grew more reckless than ever before. She went a little too sharp on a note, and another droplet cascaded down her anguished face. The snake whipped its tail around her torso and strained its mus-cles against her lungs, constricting her breath. But, she was almost to the end. At the crescendo of the piece she told herself this is who she was. This is what her mother wanted. If she ruined this, she would ruin everything. Her mother would never forgive her. As she played the last notes, shadowy memories played in the back of her mind; the image of her mother’s small feet dangling above the bedroom hardwood floor. The rope wrapped tightly around the tall bedframe post. Her mother’s dangly gold jewelry

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hung midair before falling onto the ground in slow motion and shattering into a mil-lion pieces. The snake squeezed. The music pierced her ears, and her head felt like ex-ploding. She gasped for air and finally set down her bow. Tears swam in her eyes.

The judges clapped quietly. She sat up and wiped her face. “Thank you very much. We will be in touch.”She put away her violin, gathered her things, and picked up her coat as she

walked out the door. The heat of the auditorium stifled around the girl in the red scarf and she broke out into a run as she passed through the lobby, pulling her scarf tighter, so close to suffocation. The secretary looked up from her screen as the girl ran by and roughly pushed through the doors to the outside.

Once back in the cool late afternoon air, she could breathe. She stood there for a minute, letting her body cool off as she closed her eyes and told herself everything would be okay. Then she went to a nearby bench and sat down, her red scarf hung limp around her brittle neck.

She sat for a long time. Just breathing. Watching the world as it moved around her. Everything seemed contrastingly slower than when she first arrived at the street corner. Cars moved lethargically down the road and business men strode in easy un-rushed step. Her back and arms relaxed onto the cold wooden seat. Beams of sunshine dipped out from behind the gray clouds, and the girl reminisced on summer days she spent as a child. Sitting in the back yard with her mother and father. Talking to her mom about anything and everything as her dad cooked on the grill and told jokes that made them laugh. Before it all fell apart.

A bus with a freshly plastered advertisement for sports equipment screeched by and the girl looked up from her fixed gaze. In bold black letters the poster read: LOVE WHO YOU ARE. LOVE WHAT YOU DO.

The words resonated within the girl, and she sat and thought about it for a long time. She thought about the day she moved out. When she left her father to live alone in his hole of smothering regret and endless frustration. She thought about her violin. And how she would play nonstop, late into the night until her fingers bled. And she would think about her mother the whole time.

The girl in the red scarf looked down at her violin case, which was propped against the bench. So lifeless and empty. Devoid of any human emotion. A barren co-matose object. She swiftly picked it up, walked over to a nearby trashcan, and dropped it in. She walked away and didn’t look back.

As she skipped down the street, the snake began to release its pressure and un-coil itself, sluggishly slithering away. The erratic music died to nothing. Her ears were

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full of peaceful silence except for one sound: She heard her mother say, “And one and two and three and four…” and then the girl pulled off her red scarf and let it go in the wind. She watched as it flew away and frolicked down the busy street, a beautiful sym-phony of color as it spun around with the yellow and orange autumn leaves.

Her phone rang as she danced down the sidewalk. “Hello?... Yes this is Wendy…” she answered with a smile.

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by: michelle vatral