Today, we are featuring Inklings Book Contest 2024 finalist Rahul Sundaresan! He finished 10th grade this past school year and wrote a haunting piece of realistic fiction story titled “The Last Song.” One judge praised Rahul for his flowing sentences and emotional resonance, along with his well-crafted storytelling. Continue below to enjoy his work in digital book or plain text form.
There is a quaint little town called Harper, tucked into a little corner of Campbell County, South Dakota. Harper was a proper small town, with a population of only around 4000, and it was slowly shrinking even further.
Harper had once been a big-name town in Campbell County, known as the center of the arts, particularly music, for the area. However, a declining economy and lack of work drove dozens of musicians and music teachers from Harper, leaving its once-thriving musical quarter a sad husk of its former glory.
On a secluded corner of Willow Lane, in the southern part of town, an old-fashioned yellow two-story house stood in solitude among rows of abandoned homes, with their lights forever off, their doors forever shut, and their beds forever empty.
In that quaint yellow house lived an old man by the name of Thomas Wright, and he was the last music teacher in that little town. Mr. Wright had been teaching piano for so long that he had even taught the grandparents of some of his final students. For over 70 years, Mr. Wright graced Harper with his boundless dedication to music and devotion to his students. His work and his love of music transcended simple notes on a page and reached a level that could almost be considered worship. Aside from his work teaching music, Mr. Wright was a dedicated composer, always writing something new. Although little of his work was ever performed, the music students loved hearing about new pieces and playing snippets of them during their lessons to surprise Thomas.
Near the end of his life, Mr. Wright threw himself headlong into his work with a new fervor. Though he was in his late 90s, he continued to write music, pumping out a symphony nearly every year and countless other small pieces.
One crisp Sunday morning, a single, solemn bell from Harper’s old church rang in sorrow, marking the death of Professor Wright. The news spread like wildfire in Harper, and a veil of anguish was cast over all of its residents. Among Wright’s final students, none took the news of Wright’s passing as hard as Steven. Steven had been Mr. Wright’s protege, spending countless hours hunched over a piano, honing his skills. Before his death, Mr. Wright had even written Steven into his will, and passed on the contents of his music room to Steven, with the stipulation that Steven would complete the work Mr. Wright had begun.
A couple of months after Mr. Wright’s passing, Steven was digging through Wright’s conservatory, cataloging all of his unfinished work and preparing to begin the lengthy process of writing endings to his various pieces. In one corner of the room, Steven noticed a cardboard box, seemingly untouched by dust. It was placed in such a way, and in the middle of the room, that there was no way Steven could have missed it. Carefully, he lifted the lid of the box, revealing nothing but a few lonely sheets of music at the bottom. Not wanting to leave anything out of his catalog, Steven cautiously gathered up the music and brought the sheets to Mr. Wright’s tiny old desk. Turning on the desk lamp, he pushed his glasses up his nose and read the words at the top: “The Last Song.” Hastily stuck onto the top page of music was a note in Mr. Wright’s messy handwriting that simply read “Finish it.”
Steven stepped over the various boxes scattered around the room to reach the piano and placed his newfound discovery upon the stand. Reverently, as if in a trance, he lifted his long, thin, pianist’s fingers, and began to play. With each note rang out a melody of light and dark, life’s ups and downs, a thousand days and nights.
Steven, in his mind’s eye, saw Mr. Wright walking into his first music class almost 90 years ago. He saw Wright’s first note on the piano. He saw his excitement at buying his first instrument, saw his apprehension at applying to music school, and his joy at being accepted. He saw Mr. Wright’s bliss at his wedding, his sorrow at his wife’s passing, his pride at his first symphony being finished.
As he played through each movement, he saw Wright’s first student, his delight at seeing his first student to play in Carnegie Hall, and his satisfaction with his first student to pursue music as a career. He saw the old man growing lonelier and lonelier as his neighbors in the music quarter left to find other work. He saw Wright’s fear of being left alone. He saw his confusion and anxiety at seeing one word on a piece of hospital stationery: POSITIVE.
On the last sheet, he saw Mr. Wright’s final years, his long, sleepless nights composing new music, and his frustration at the balls of crumpled-up paper surrounding his tiny piano seat. He saw Wright’s despair at not being able to finish his final work before his passing, and finally, he saw his acceptance of his impending death.
As the last, haunting, dissonant note rang out in the still silence of the music room, Steven turned the final page to see nothing. The chord never resolved, the piece never ended, and it almost seemed like Wright’s life was cut short on that last missing page. Suddenly, the final, frantic jotting from Steven’s old mentor made sense.
Steven, hands shaking, slowly removed his glasses and set them on the piano. All of a sudden, he realized he was dripping with sweat. How could Mr. Wright leave his life unfinished? By all accounts, he had lived a long, fulfilling one, filled with the only thing he cared about: music.
Steven sat in the same position for several hours, tearing apart his mind in an attempt to find the chord that would finish Wright’s final work. The final page was empty, and it seemed like nothing could fill it.
Days, weeks, and months went by, and Steven went on with his life, slowly forgetting about the piece. Long after he finished cataloging the rest of Wright’s work, the wizened professor’s last song lay perched, sorrowful and solitary, on the same music stand it had last been played on.
A year later, Steven left Harper, traveling across the country to attend music school in Florida. Five years after that, Steven left the country, traveling around the world to perform his music in famed concert halls in every imaginable place on Earth. But something was always missing. Steven had fame and fortune, what more could he possibly need?
Decades after Wright’s death, when Steven was near 60, he suffered a stroke that prevented him from ever performing again. Struck with immense despair, he was forced to retire home to Harper and took up teaching to put food on the table. He took up Wright’s abandoned residence in the deserted music quarter, and spent years searching for his first student, supplementing his income with odd jobs around the town. He was almost reduced to begging on the street when a knock on the door one late Friday night called him from his bed. One little girl, barely nine, on her tiptoes to reach the knocker, stepped back shyly, clutching a small doll. “Can you teach me?” she asked, and those magic words reignited the fire that had once burned so bright in the old star’s heart. “Of course,” he said, and word spread that there was a music teacher in Harper once more.
Years later, Steven had seen his students pursue music, he had heard of his students in every concert hall the world over. He was surrounded by people whose lives he had touched, and yet it wasn’t enough. He was as fulfilled as a teacher could ever be, but something was still missing.
It was only when Steven was himself reaching the end of his life, having felt the apprehension of his own doctor’s message, the fear of being alone, and the realization that he had left something incomplete that he took one last look at the old man’s former music room and noticed three sheets of paper on the ancient music stand of the little antique piano. With his own final song now drawing to a close, the aged student sat down at the piano, pressed a pen to the final, yellowed, empty page, and began to write.
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