Blood Bath in Strings

by Anne Earney

Elizabeth had time to play the harp these days, for one could only spend so many hours roaming the castle alone. She experimented with finger placement and rhythm. It was difficult to coax the sounds she wanted from the harp, sounds she might have heard before, in the days of the servants, in the days before… She tried not to think about it, but the harp made ugly sounds, which were pretty sounds, but ugly to Elizabeth, for what she wanted to hear, what she yearned to recreate, was the fearful skittering of thin shoes across the tiles, the screech of bitten nails on the stone walls, the wails women make when… Elizabeth could almost hear those sounds, almost, as she tore her fingers across the strings. She thought it too bad there was no one left to enjoy her artistry.

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Anne Earney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. She works in a grocery store, making good use of the MFA she earned from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her fiction has been published in places such as Dossier Journal, Night Train, Versal and Big Ugly Review.