This short story was originally written for a creative writing class at Penn State Altoona back in 2008. I remember the challenge was to write a story in one page. It was published in one of those school publications of student work that nobody reads and I don’t remember the name of, but someone somewhere still has a copy at the bottom of a box of dusty mementos. It’s also worth noting that at the time of writing this I didn’t know nearly as much about music terminology as I seemed to think I did.
The Overture
The first time I heard Tchaikovsky’s “1812: Overture” was as a six-foot rat.
July fourth of ‘96, good old Pyotr blaring from the public speakers as the merry-go-round operator sits stage left sneaking a joint and two teenagers are apprehended for throwing soda cans at the go-karters.
This is where the magic lives, a beautiful cacophony.
Right about the time Prince Charming is pinching the ass of some lucky 14-year-old, I’m staring through my cellophane eyes into the lens of a camera, watching my reflection hold the shoulders of a blank-faced little girl. It start’s with an overture. Can you hear the strings?
“Smile!” says the fat man standing center stage, fumbling with the focus as he adjusts the plastic ears to stop them falling from his head and the picturesque trophy wife rolls her eyes.
“Stop shaking it, you’ll ruin the picture, it’ll come out all blurry.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
This is where dreams come true; cue the brass.
“Don’t snap at me in front of all these people” she says. He coughs a haze of profanity beneath his breath as the ears on his head begin to slip. Zoom and focus. Is it clear yet? Ease in. Diminuendo.
“Smile honey!” He says, and I see in the glass a reflection of tears begin to huddle around her eyes. “I paid a lot of money for us to be here today, I’m not leaving without a photo of you smiling.”
Listen closely as it starts to build. Accelerando. “Fucking smile!”
That’s the marcato.
She yells and smacks the ears from his thick head and tells him not to swear at the child. My thick white, wool-knit hands start to move with the trembling chest of tired little girl. I hold her closer and cover her ears from the music as it swells to a crescendo. People stop by to watch the show, biting pink wads of sugar cones and for a minute forgetting how long the line is at Space Mountain. It’s your average sitcom without the laugh track.
The percussion of obscenity rings across the park and holds the audience captive. This is where friends share the magic. Stage right, two security guards enter.
A swift morendo and a woman with a bruised eye and her sobbing child are escorted from the park, stage-left, with a complementary coupon for half-off their next visit. An officer exits stage-right with a reluctant man who’s ears seem to be drooping off his head and the crowd of onlookers begin to disperse to see what else is on. The merry-go-round operator lights another spliff and Prince Charming smiles at some lucky girl and two punks try to climb the steel mesh fence to sneak back in to see the magic. And there I am, sitting center-stage with the biggest fucking smile on my plastic face.
Welcome to the happiest place on earth; Al niente.