YeahWrite Super Challenge #22 Round 1 Prompts:
Image: 
| Action: playing a musical instrument badly
[Short-listed in Round 1; progressed to Final round]
Synopsis: Armed with only a ball of twine, twenty year old Nico does what he can to help his increasingly forgetful grandmother.
Grandma’s red leather purse lies on top of the mailbox. Again. She must have left it there when she collected the mail after her morning errands.
Shaking my head, I pick it up and walk around to the back of the house, letting myself in. Behind the door is a small wooden shelf with metal hooks underneath for keys. Slipping my rucksack off, I thrust my hand in and rummage for the ball of pale unbleached twine I bought at the local hardware store about six months ago. Just a regular ball of twine but it was all I could think to use to prevent so many things being misplaced. When I first bought it, it was a hefty size, but now it fits in the palm of my hand.
Scrabbling around, my fingers brush against the ridges of curled twine. I drag it out of my bag and loop the loose end through an eyelet in Grandma’s purse, setting it on the shelf. After measuring out a length of twine, I snip it off and tie a double knot around one of the hooks. No chance of losing it.
“Thief!”
Snorting, I turn to see Grandma standing in the kitchen doorway, eyes sparkling with mischief. My Grandma is eccentric, zany… demented, even.
I pluck at the loop of twine with my forefinger. “Why would I be tying it here so you can find it again if I were a thief?” I demand even as she swoops forward to envelop me in a welcoming hug. “And do you often hug thieves?”
“Only the ones with excellent genetics, Nico.” She pokes the dimple in my cheek I share with my dad, having inherited it from my grandfather. Side-stepping me, she settles into the routine of fixing a snack. I’m a twenty year old college student but it doesn’t seem to matter.
“How was your day?” she asks, bustling about the kitchen.
“Two assignments submitted,” I say. “Now I just need to study for the exam.” My college is near her house so I drop in a few times a week. My parents are grateful, especially my dad.
Walking into the living room, I dump my rucksack on a chair. A cursory glance reassures me that things seem fine. Yet a hasty patrol of the house reveals the TV remote sitting on the bathroom sink. Sighing, I pick it up, examining the back. Maybe if I used sticky tape to attach the end of the twine, I could tie the other end to the TV cabinet. No more misplaced TV remote.
I trail back to the living room to make the repair. Funny how I didn’t even know what a ball of twine looked like until about six months ago. Now I never seem to be without it.
“How was your day?” Grandma asks, emerging from the kitchen with a tray in her hands.
“You already asked, Grandma.” The tip of my tongue sticks out as I focus on making my repair. I should wrap the sticky tape around twice to be sure it’ll hold.
“Well, maybe you didn’t answer satisfactorily!” she retorts.
Even though I chuckle, my heart squeezes. “You mean, you were bored by my answer?” I tease, keeping up the deliberate light-heartedness.
She sets the tray on the coffee table. “Stop fiddling with that and come sit,” she insists. “You know I have to collect your grandfather from town on Thursdays.”
Despair washes over me. I should have known when I found the purse that today was not a good day. I’ll have to tell my parents. There’s only so long we can pretend not to notice what’s happening with Grandma.
But I’ve learned there’s no point arguing. It only upsets or angers her. Instead, I set everything down before nodding to the guitar in the corner of the room. My grandfather’s pride and joy. “Can I play a song first?”
She purses her lips. “As if I could deny you anything, Nico,” she huffs. “But don’t tell your grandfather.”
With great care, I lift it from the rack: a Sunburst Les Paul Standard. My grandad had big dreams in his youth of being a rockstar. He even wooed my grandma with his guitar riffs. It must have worked because my father was born a year after they met. It meant Grandad never did become a rockstar, but he always kept playing the guitar.
I perch on the edge of the chair, my left fingers curling awkwardly around the fret. The strings are rough against my uncalloused fingertips. Sliding the pick free, I hold it stiffly between my right thumb and forefinger, strumming downwards. The note resonates through the room. Clumsily, I contort my fingers to try and make the next chord, plucking the strings anew.
Grandma listens but I notice how she flinches each time a clashing note sounds. Then I see it: a blink of her eyes and furrow of her brow. First, bewildered; then, grief-stricken. She remembers Grandad died two years ago.
I stop playing. Grandma has never mistaken me for Grandad, at least not yet, but the fact that I can only strum a few strangled chords is usually enough to jolt her back from the past.
“I thought it was…” She draws in a sharp breath before shaking her head. “Never mind. Just old age!”
I laugh but the sound is hollow. Returning the guitar to its rack, I turn only to see Grandma staring at the ball of twine I left on the table.
“I don’t think twine is the answer to this, Nico,” she murmurs, voice small.
I sink down beside her. “I don’t think so, either,” I admit. It seems so silly now: fixing the symptom, not the disease. Still, I think of one last thing I can tether.
Snipping off a long piece of twine, I tie one end around her forefinger before repeating the same with mine. I smile at her. “But I promise you’ll never lose me.”
C.A. Raine 