Critique: Swan Song by Kari Wolfe

November 4th, 2009 | Author: Kari Wolfe

Ok, let’s try something new here.

What I’m wanting to do is to post a short story and to have anyone who wishes to critique it to take a stab at it. But don’t just tell me whether you like or dislike it – that’s not entirely helpful, while it’s nice to know.

What I want is: how did this make you feel? What was the gist of the story to you? What worked or didn’t work for you with this story? Did I make the characters believable and realistic?

I don’t really care about punctuation – I’ve never really had a problem with it so unless it’s major, please don’t worry about it. It’s the overall story itself that I’d like to know what you think about

The story is after the fold.

Swan Song by Kari Wolfe

The soloist almost made me cry. Or at least protect my ears from her incessant baying. She had a less than human sound – more like a donkey bray or a toad, perhaps. I waved her away. Tears streamed down my face as I began the mental process of blocking her from my memory.

No swan was she.

The song I had requested for my tryouts was beautiful. The last six people to sing it (if singing was the correct word) mutilated the melodies, the harmonies, even the words – the simplest part of the song! – were garbled and tone deaf.

The next woman came out and, when the music started, she began to warble.

Hideous, hideous! I wanted to scream, to hit, anything to stop the performance. Instead, I sat, a model of decorum. When it was over, I touched my ears to stem the tide of blood gushing forth. To my surprise, they were dry.

She left the stage and I groaned.

“Is there anything left for today?” I called to my assistant.

“Only one,” he called back to me. Letting out a tortured sigh, I sat back in my seat, elbow on the arm rest, chin in hand, praying that these next few minutes would go by quickly.

The woman came out on stage. Actually, “woman” was a nicety. She was an old crone. Her yellowish-grey hair was pinned up in a strict granny bun at the crown of her head. Her body had succumbed to the gravitational pull of Earth, her breasts fallen to her waist, her belly falling to her knees. My eyes weeped of their own accord.

Her costume was dull and grey – not even a grey matching wolves’ fur or the dusty grey of Roman marble – and her shoes were more like straps attached to boards then tied to her feet! Surely this woman knew someone who should have discouraged her from auditioning.

I closed my eyes as she took center stage. My foot jerked and started tapping, my anxiety revealed.

God, just end it – make it stop!

Suddenly a sweet melody began. It weaved through the auditorium, all over. I peered through my eyelids and could swear that I saw the melody: every color of the spectrum in thousands of different directions coming together in different and unique ways.

My heart stirred. Looking on the stage, the woman – the old woman whom I labeled a crone – the woman had been in disguise all along! Her voice – her gorgeous voice – turned her into an elegant swan. I had fixated on the woman’s details – her exterior; it was the swan on the inside I wanted to know.

I knew who my soloist was.

As the song came to an end, the music stopped and the woman, the beautiful swan, smiled once, eyes bright, then crumpled at the base of the microphone.

When I got to her, she was dead.

-oo-

Please leave your comments, critiques, and thoughts in the comment section below.