The Musings of Fortune (new story)

I'm a short story person. What else is there to say? Feel free to browse and comment.

In the silence of the auditorium, I can hear the ghosts. They aren't the kind of ghosts who haunt you in the dead of night. Perhaps 'ghost' is the wrong word. They are the echos of concerts; of plays; of musicals. In the silence, I hear them all.

And I see them.

I see a man, sitting at a piano which says STEINWAY in bold golden letters. He plays a sonata which reminds me so thoroughly of trees and moonlight. Yes. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. For a moment, I am transported to a forest so full of life that I once mistook all of the trees for auditorium chairs. How silly of me. Now I see the truth. But the music fades. Like the fog which had covered the sleeping trees like a blanket, the music fades away again into the echos of the empty auditorium. It is lost once again and, once again, I am in a forest of chairs. Chairs that I somehow mistook for trees.

I laugh quietly to myself and the laughter comes back with the force of a crowd. The auditorium is packed with people. I didn't see them before. On stage is a group of actors. They look like they are still in high school. My age, perhaps. They pause in their play to let the laughter die down. It takes awhile. When the last laugh is had, one of the actors makes an aside which sends the audience into gales of laughter again. I smile even though I can't hear the words of the actors. They have been lost to time and only left their energy behind. As the audience fades once again, I'm left in the auditorium.

I am not alone.

A little girl pokes her head out of the curtains and shyly looks around. She steps out and reveals herself to be a ballerina. She dances, even though there is no music playing. She looks lighter than a feather. She moves like silk. I can imagine what she must have looked like as an adult. Beautiful and graceful. I can see it in her dance. She grew up to be famous. As she draws to a close, I stand and clap, wandering idly where the rest of the audience is in this illusion. The little girl looks straight at me, surprised. She curtsies and runs off the stage.

Not all things seen here are illusions, it seems.

I suppose one sentence counts as a short story. And it is real good.

I'm kidding. I can not wait to read.

Edit: Awesome first story.

I wrote it awhile ago, but I'm trying to decide if I want to submit that one or the one I'm going to post shortly in a writing contest.

Every night, I watch for the little flashes of light which announce the arrival of summer.

When I was a little girl, I would catch as many of the little bugs as I could and bring them home in a small glass jar. I kept them next to my bedside so I could watch them. With drooping eyelids, I would count the little bugs and name them- Marsha, Betty, Harris- until I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, I would say hello to them all, take their jar outside, and free them, saying "Goodbye, firefly" to each one.
One night, I accidentally bumped the jar in my sleep. It fell to the floor with a crash just loud enough to wake me. I opened my eyes to see them flying all around my room. It was like magic. My room sparkled with their little lights. When I slept again, I dreamed of dancing through a star filled sky. The broken glass was forgotten until the morning.
After that, my mother forbade me to bring fireflies into the house.

When I was in high school, I decided I wanted to be a dancer. My mother did not approve. We argued all afternoon. Finally, tired of arguing, I walked out the back door and sat in the yard.
I saw it out of the corner of my tear filled eye. Flash. The first firefly of summer. I wiped away my tears, remembering the night in my room. Flash. Flash. I stood up and bowed to the firefly. "May I have this dance?" Flash. Flash. It was like the flash of a camera. Closing my eyes, I imagined a filled theater. Thousands of eyes watched me in my imagination. Flash. Flash. Imaginary cameras went off.
I danced.


My freshman year at Juilliard was hard. I was constantly working on schoolwork or waiting tables to get enough money for food. Days faded into one another. Life was nothing but work. I spent my nights dreading the next day. Those few friends I had left drifted away, one by one. They told me that they were tired of hearing me say I didn't have the time for them. I was all alone.
One night, in Summer, I awoke to a knock on my door. Bleary eyed, I crossed the room and opened the door. Mark, one of my few friends, was standing there with his hands behind his back.
"Hey," he said "I heard you needed a little cheering up." He produced a little glass jar.
Flash. Flash.
"May I have this dance?"
I laughed, curtsied, and took his hand.

When he died, I shut myself in my room. I was sixty. Mark and I had no children. I alone carried the unbearable grief. I hardly ate or slept for days. My only comfort was sitting by the window, watching life pass me by. One old woman, sitting all alone. That was me.
One night, I received a phone call.
"Hello?" I asked. My voice cracked from disuse.
"Come outside." Came the response of Natasha, one of my neighbors.
I obeyed.
Flash. Flash.
"Mark is watching over you." Natasha said. "Show him you still want to dance."

Now my bones are creaky. My eyes are tired. My skin is pale and loose. I am eighty-six. My life has been a full one. I am lying in bed with my window open. My body no longer wants to move. I am tired. I long to dance again. But there is one more thing that I must do.
A warm breeze floats in from the window and something lands on my frail hand. Flash. Flash.
My voice is weak and already fading. "Goodbye, firefly."
My breathing grows steadily more and more shallow, but I am calm. Soon I will dance with the fireflies again.

Yeah I would submit Fireflies. It is pretty cool.

An abandoned Pooh bear sits on the sidewalk with his plastic jar of honey. A lost soccer ball lays in the yard. The lights are dim behind the thick, wine-red colored curtains of the house on the street corner, but the world is not silent. There is screaming and yelling under the roof, heard only by a cold and unfeeling audience of stars. These are the screams of a child; primal screams of rage and terror. They swell to an unbearable forte and then die in sobs.
The dark red door opens. A shadowy man stands sillhoutetted by the hallway light, a child pulling desperately on his pants leg. He throws a tiny body out onto the frozen grass.
Still whiskers point up to the black night. Green eyes stare, wide open and unseeing, at the universe. The fading light of a small kitten's life goes out and leaves behind only a carcas. A corpse asking, "Why?"
You could have stopped this.

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So this is a rough draft. Any suggestions for editing would be loved.