SO I DON'T EXIST

So I Don't Exist

Mariah Lumsden

 CHAPTER 1

 Maybe I could have let it go if I tried, but the music didn't know the war. The music was young, and the war was ancient. There was no way they could have ever understood each other, or have a conversation that didn't involve them yelling at each other until their lungs burned. I understood where both of them were coming from. The war was tired, their skin was yellowing and caving in, they had been breathing for too long. Music was just a child. She was smart for her age and she showed so much potential; new ways of thinking. The war was bad and the music was good. In this world, too much bad and too much good could never even be in the same room with each other, nevetheless in the same universe. It was however, the universe's decision to do so, so I forced the war to listen to the music until the war cried. I forced the war to listen to the music until the war's ears bled.

 I could have spent days in that chair, scratching away at sheet music. Sometimes I was so passionate about it that I ripped the pages to shreds in my attempt to create art. Art is still art if it's torn apart. The meaning changes however, when it is broken and lying on the floor because who will see it but the artist themself?

 My fingers were in love with the strings on that violin. It's like they would dance everytime I played a song. The bow is what made them sing, and it was angelic. I would get lost in the strings, and the bow. It was transcendant, a lovely vacation from what was going on outside those dingy apartment walls. It was the war. That dirty war. It kept me up all night. I could hear the screams and the agony like hell was only one block away. Stomachs were being stirred with hunger and anxiousness. That was probably the loudest sound. The other loud sound was people weeping from lost ones. It was like you could feel the life leaving the earth on those nights when the crying was the loudest. Babies screamed all night long; they would have strong lungs when they grew up. Lungs to breath, lungs to sing, and lungs to cry some more. I hoped that they would have lungs to laugh with too.

 I wanted the war to die so people could stop screaming and feeling constant pain. A part of me hoped that my music was a sound in the world that didn't bring the feeling of one sinking deeper and deeper into an ocean of quicksand. I wanted my music to fill the world. But it couldn't.

 CHAPTER 2

 The moment I opened that front door was the moment that I filled with dread. Every single time I opened it. I had to open it though. I had to feel the cold seep through to my skin and violate me because I had to go out into this broken world to go to work. Playing the violin all day doesn't pay the bills, although I hoped that one day it would.

 Chilled to the bone, I strolled outside with all of my layers on. I was wearing a long, cinamon coat. It was so long it barely grazed my ankles, but it kept me warm for the most part. I lived in the city so I usually found myself walking to my job as opposed to taking a bus or a car. Also, I didn't make or have enough money to pay for gas so walking was pretty much the only alternative for me. My work was only a couple blocks away from my apartment building so I didn't mind the walk anyways. I always saw the same sights and same souls on the way. There was always that broken down brick building that went out of business about five years ago that nobody bothered to sell so it just sat there, weathered and cold. Everytime there was even the slightest of a breeze, the dust would be torn from their safe home on top of the disproportionate bricks and fall to their timely death. Then there was always that man with a lonely hot dog cart, shivering and praying for someone to muster up a crinkled dollar bill to buy one of his slimy hot dogs.

 My work took place in a building similar to the eroded building wiltering away a few sidewalks back. It was an ancient building, one with five stories but only the first two stories being used because the other ones were unstable. The first story was inhabitated by a small coffee shop, not at all thriving just sort of existing. The second story was used for storage that someone neglected at least twenty years ago. Although, I am certain that if more than two people went up there at the same time, the whole floor would disinigrate into dust and fall tragically.

 I opened the door to the coffee shop with the icy doorknob and smiled at my boss who was a quaint, round little Italian man. He wore a curly black mustache, which did not at all match his full head of gray hair, had olive tanned skin despite the sun going on vacation. His name was Francesco, and he was the purest person I had ever met. He smiled with all the teeth he had left, and genuinely.

 "Hello, Francesco," I said softly, grazing the door behind me as it closed.

 "Ciao, Aisla." He said this cheerfully; however, I was concerned as it was far less cheerful than his usual self.

 "What's wrong, Francesco?" I said, walking over to him where he slumped behind the counter and cupped his folded hands. He wore a grim expression; the lines on his forehead deepened like canyons.

 "The coffee shop is, how to say," he said, talking with his hands, "going out of business." His bottom lip twitched like he was going to cry, which sparked a chain reaction and as a result, my bottom lip started twitching.

 "Today is the last day," Francesco said, fixing his posture and walking over to a lonely coffee pot. I seldom felt sorrow for I lived in a world filled to the brim with sorrow already, I could not afford to add more to the overflowing cup. So I put on an old, dirty apron that was once clean and white. I walked over an isolated individual who sat in a deep cave in the very back of the small coffee shop, sipping microscopic sips of black coffee and staring out of the grim window dramatically.

 "Is everything okay?" I asked them, as cheerfully as I possibly could. They sighed loudly, fidgeting with their coffee cup.

 "The coffee is excellent, but you know," They said, flicking their eyes back towards the window.

 "Okay great, let me know I can get you anything else," I said awkwardly. I turned around and could her the clattering of coffee cups and spoons swimming in the coffee, but it was prevalently loud. I couldn't focus. I was overwhelmed because it had hit me. This was my last day, with no notice. I had to dive deeper into the world to find a new job the next day, and I wasn't sure I was ready for that. I wasn't born in the right time. I wasn't existing in the right time and everything was all wrong.

 I tore off my apron and frantically ran back to my apartment complex. I needed my music to feed my soul because it felt like I was slowly disintegrating into nothing. It was all wrong.

 I opened the door to my apartment breathlessly, as I had just ran at least a mile and a few fligths of stairs. It felt like I was suffocating and my music would give me air.

 My fingertips were the first to find the violin. Automatically, without music, I felt better. My throat was still closed up but it was keeping me alive. I rested my chin on the chinrest, and the bow embraced the strings and my fingers danced on the strings.

 I could finally breathe. Anything that was going on out there, did not matter. I was safe, the melody was cradling me like an infant. Maybe I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but as long as I just kept playing my instrument, everything was complete like a puzzle. I had found the last piece all along.

  https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/.