The Sound of Failure -- flash fiction by Mashal Ali Khan

You are startled by the insurgence of eyes staring at you. It’s not that you’re not used to it and it’s not that you’re even surprised by it, but each time your mother clinks her glass, your heart stutters a little, diving deep into the realm of imagination in which all your worst nightmares are real. Sarah, she says to you, do begin.

You are acutely aware of the small room and the large crowd. Your entire extended family is flashing wide-toothed grins and dimpled cheeks, patient—almost too patient in waiting for your gloved hands to touch the freezing piano. The room is hot, too hot. The piano is cold, icy. You are wearing a pink dress. It’s a little tight, signs of your older sisters’ wears still on it. As you sit down on the piano stool, you think of how you used to adore watching your older siblings play. 

Back then, vivid scenarios of how you would one day be the centre of the photo frame would fill your mind. Back then, you would pick out colours to paint your future cassette. But now, all you can think of is how you will fail. Your preordained failure replays in your mind over and over and over again until every cell in your brain is certain you will fail and they will not forget. They will not forget. They will not let you forget. Your failure will become the talk of reunions to come. Your failure will be recorded on tape. You can’t burn cassettes. The sound of your failure will replay for years to come. You will not forget.

Your hands graze the middle keys. You press the wrong note. Your family laughs it off. You grin, as if making a silly mistake, not engraving memories into the room’s history; not implanting reasons in your mother’s brain. Your heart stops pumping blood. You will think of this moment every day for the next three hundred and sixty-five. You take a deep breath, letting it go slowly, and begin again.

One, two, three; one, two, three; one, two—yes, there, you’ve got it now. It’s a slow dance between failure and perfection. A waltz. You hate slow dance. Slowly, the crowd begins to cheer you on. Your Aunt Soph is side-eyeing her children, a mothery look on her freckled face that confirms disappointment. Your cousin Alex is making funny faces, his hair disheveled and his tie missing. Your youngest brother James is looking at you with the same foolish hope you once possessed.

 As the seconds weigh forward, your fingers break down, moving at the speed of a grandmother. Every note pressed can be the reason the room is laughing. At you. The same thought circles the neurons in her brain. What if they hate it? What if they hate it? What if they hate it?

But then it’s over. People clap. They smile. They praise you, say you have your father’s eyes and his musical talent. They make their way to the salad bar. And then it’s over. Years of piano practice, months of nail-biting and it’s over in three hundred seconds. Years of her mother’s warnings and it’s over in three hundred seconds. No one comments on the Mozart. No one notices the fringes on your dress. No one cares. All those sleepless nights practising. All the nightmares. All the scenarios of failure.  No one cares but you. 

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Mashal Ali Khan is an aspiring writer who spends her time reading, writing and cooking up new plot ideas. She is the author of her self-published debut novel Incarnovine and owner of The Ethos Press blog. A sophomore in high school, she is interested in journalism, languages and culture.