A short story:

The music had lain there for years, forgotten. Now she looked at it trying to remember why she had not listened to it in so many years. She switched it on. The tunes floated inside her brain, engulfing her in its haunting warmth….traversing down every cell in her body. And then it reached her heart.

It felt like she was struck by a hammer. She doubled over; her arms going around herself instinctively….trying to brace herself from the vacuum that was threatening to pull her in. She had thought she had come a long way…choosing to be where she was. She had stopped her search, forgiven, forgotten.

A blankness surrounded her now. And darkness. Tears poured down un-sensed and unchecked. Panic. She looked up at the darkness, reaching out for somebody….something. But there was nobody, nothing.

Only emptiness. The music had stopped

Another short story:

She didn’t know her father, only her mother and her two brothers. They lived in poverty. Her mother was her only connect to the world. So it wasn’t really a mystery that the two brothers left her when their mother died. She was only 12 and all alone.

She survived growing up to be young woman. Though she was plain looking, she could have turned head had she grown up in a richer environment. Now she wore a colourless dirty peasant dress and tied a scarf around her head…roaming around the market place with her empty cart trying to figure out her next meal. People around her were happy, laughing, talking. She felt like a ghost. Nobody noticed her, talked to her.

She grew older….yet without any connect with the world or its people. She never cried at her fate accepting what was given to her. Desolate and empty.

Now she suddenly remembered and felt the desolation and emptiness after all these years. And finally she cried. Cried at her fate and her disconnect with her world or its people.

At last she knew.