Best Muse Ever

“Are you all right?” Israfel was tucked into a corner, a lap harp perched on his knees while he plucked desultory minor chords.

“No,” Elise said. She reached up to run a hand through her hair again and had to consciously force herself to stop, because she’d been doing that for the last hour and turned her hair into a rat’s nest. She sat on her free hand and continued twirling her pencil with her right hand. The staff paper remained stubbornly blank, and she couldn’t hear anything but those stupid minor chords. She twisted around and said, “Could you knock it off for just a little bit?”

Israfel obediently lifted his hands off the strings, and the instrument dissolved into thin air.

Elise narrowed her eyes, untrusting of the blank guilelessness on Israfel’s face, but she said, “Thanks,” and resumed staring at the empty staff paper. It was taunting her.

“The song is due at noon,” Israfel said. “It’s almost one a.m. now.”

“I know that,” Elise said between gritted teeth. She hummed under her breath, and the tune was catchy. Maybe she could work with it. But then she realized it was just the melody to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. Crap. She needed something original.

“Tick tock,” Israfel sing-songed, and he was grinning, that winged nuisance.

Tick tock, Elise thought glumly, and then it struck her. She yanked a blank piece of paper out of her math notebook and began scratching out lyrics.

Tick tock
It’s the running of the clock
The countdown
To the meltdown
And the end of
Time

Then she abandoned the lyrics and scooped up her guitar, and now she could hear it, her song, her one song glory. She tried chord after chord until she found the one that matched the beauty in her mind, and as she played it came to her, the slide of notes, the shift of chords, the pattern and the rhythm.

When she stopped to look at the clock again, it was almost five a.m. and Israfel was singing a countermelody for the chorus.

Deadlines were the best muse ever.

(355 words)