Untitled Short Story I

 I want to write a better ending…it just kind of stops. But there’s nowhere to go with it. I wrote this very late last night. Enjoy!

 ————

The landlord forcefully ejected Frank from the building and down the stairs.

The old man landed hard on the ground. He still lay crumpled on the bottom step leading to his former home when he heard a dull thud on the icy pavement next to his head. Frank raised his head to see that his violin was now sitting beside him, the case popped open from the impact. He slowly rose from the ground and closed the case. Simultaneously, the apartment door was slammed shut against the cold January wind.

Frank looked around. The usually busy city street was mostly deserted; he was alone and cold. This was no place for an old man.

For anyone, he thought.

————

As he walked down the street, he thought about how he deserved the treatment that had just been rendered him. He hadn’t paid rent in months now. The landlord, a thirty-something man with three kids and a sick wife needed the money.

But Frank wasn’t so rich himself.

He had given all of his money to pay for his wife’s funeral to be held back in Amsterdam with her family. He didn’t even get to attend. Ever since, he’d had a pathetic existence. He ate out if he ate at all. He read the newspaper if the news wasn’t too depressing for him that day, which it usually was. He taught violin lessons when he could find a student in this forsaken city.

————

Frank found himself wandering down an back alley. Before he knew it, he encountered another as forsaken as he and the rest of the city.

The hobo sat shivering, covered in newspapers and grime. Frank couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep, alive or dead. What did it matter?

The hobo stirred as Frank approached, and looked bleary-eyed into his face.

“Would you mind if I joined you?” Frank asked.

The hobo inclined his head, and closely surveyed Frank as he sat on the dirty ground. “Wuts in th’ case?”

“My violin.”

“Yuh gotta light?”

“Sorry?”

“Uh match?”

“Sorry…no. Just my violin.”

“Wil lit burn?”

“Well, I guess, but…”

“Less burn it then.”

“You don’t have any matches.”

The hobo stared and then turned over in his pile of makeshift blankets. “Whatever.”

————

After the hobo was asleep, Frank found a nearby spot against a fire hydrant. He pulled his coat tight around his feeble body and fell asleep quickly. He would do this for many nights to come, until the night when the hobo awoke to find Frank and the violin gone – never to be seen again.

~ by magginiintweed on 1 June, 2007.