Writing Contest Entry

I know I haven't written anything on the blog for a while. However, a dear friend has invited me to do a writing contest and though I haven't said I would, because I've been sick this week, I have written something for it anyway. The way it works is whoever wins gets a freelance edit of their manuscript. Personally I'm not in it to win it, though that'd be awesome when I finish writing a manuscript, but to see how well I write in the eyes of others.

We were given a topic and a picture and had to incoporate both. The topic of this writing contest was:

Relationships in general, or a specific relationship(i.e. boy/girl,
family, friends, etc.)

This was the picture and the story I've written is beneath:

BELLA CELLO

My steps echo along the platform. The quiet of the stage only heightens the need. The need to drown my sorrow. The need to drown out the crowd. I grip the neck of my beloved instrument. I sit in a simple chair surrounded by only velvet, wood, and light. The noise seems impossible to overpower but when I start to play it will fade. It is my safe haven: my playing, my music, our connection.
The noise. The sirens. The police. My home. My bathroom. My wife…my wife. I cannot let my emotions show as I play out this song. I must continue, despite.
The feeling of the strings to the wooden neck under my fingers is automatic as my bow connects. The vibration of music to my fingertips is exhilarating. It is so powerful. How could one live without such purity? The flow of music from the large wooden body to the metal endpin through the floor to my legs feels like home.
Home. My hands jerk in thought of my once humble home. Now it is a place of silence. Just like this concert hall. I move my hands to create the music again, to fill the void in this place. But it will not fill the void in the place I once called home. And now, images of another beloved quiver in my thoughts and cloud my conscious.
She clouds them so, and before I realize it, I play our song. The one I played the night we met. Ironic that I would play it now. On this night. On this night, where your bed is the bottom of the bathtub, instead of my arms.
The noise has started up again. I want to overpower it but I know the fate of this song. I knew it the moment before I came here to play. To play for the noisy crowd that does not exist. To play one last time for the one I love, who did not love me.
As the doors open, I finish our song in a dramatic but depressing series of notes, not unlike Shakespeare would write for his Romeo and Juliet ending. And refrain. I surrender to the silence as they say, “Mister Cellist, you are under arrest for the murder and drowning of your wife.”
The words echo through the hall, but all I hear is our song.