Silence Breaker

Sometimes when I think of story characters, I imagine this vast, white room with white couches, a bar with a countertop of glistening white marble, clear glasses, and a variety of hard liquor sitting colorfully on clear glass shelves. Everybody sits and quietly drinks, drink after drink yet never getting drunk as they wait to be summoned by the author.

They interact, but without the author’s presence they become shy and incapable of true and full function. So they repeat conversations that have been written out for them in previous stories. Those who have been created without a story (yet) stare blankly and taciturn at those given the precious ability of speech. Slightly envious, but slightly not because how can one miss what one never had?

The air is static and thin, unfazed even by the inane chattering of these automatons. They have no right to move the air; not yet and not while they sit in this vacuum of a waiting room. Do not feel sorry for them. They aren’t complete beings. They can’t feel loneliness or alienation…those are emotions produced by the human heart.

But that loneliness and alienation become real and painful once I take those characters into my hand and thrust them into the world of a story where they are nearly complete beings; only this time they feel the privation. Just as I would feel the lack in myself.

She sits alone at the bar, swiveling left and right on the impeccably oiled bar stool. It creates no noise as she moves back and forth, a Midori Sunrise elegantly poised at her lips as she contemplates the drink before taking a small and polite sip. It doesn’t taste like anything, she thinks to herself since she cannot speak. She places it back on the counter only to have the bartender replace the exact amount she had just swallowed.

The nameless woman had been doing this for no more than half a day because that is how old she is. She was born the second I heard the flamenco guitarist in the Green Lounge today at 4:30 p.m. With that first strum, she materialized on that bar stool. The attentive (and slightly bored) bartender immediately served her a Midori Sunrise- his specialty, since it was the only alcoholic drink aside from beer that I had ever written into a story.

Suddenly though, as if tickled by an idea, she picks up the guitar that lay quiet in its black and battered coffin. The instrument was born with her, but until that point she didn’t know what to do with it. She smiles with the knowledge that I have been thinking about her. Happiness dances around childlike in her heart as she attempts to train her face into a staid aloofness. A lively glint in her eye expresses the desire for a simpler drink. Nobody but the bartender notices this change of countenance and he switches the Midori Sunrise with a can of beer.

The first chords are clumsy, discordant, and loud. My characters immediately, de repente, stop their mechanical speech and turn their attention to the silence breaker. She struggles with one chord after another, but within a few attempts they grow clearer and more intense. More alive becomes her musical ideal though the concept is as distant as an agnostic’s view of heaven. She has a notion, and now she’s milking it for all it’s worth.

A chord becomes a tune. A tune becomes a simple melody. Myra alternates strums with plucks, beats upon the body of the guitar for rhythm, and moves her head with the music for artistic emphasis. As music is apt to be infectious, the rest of the characters within the room mimic this gesture with slithers of enjoyment.

Then as easily as she was born, Myra begins to sing.