The remarkable thing about this story is that it's very similar to...
No, actually the two remarkable things about this story are that Me and Jon...
THREE, there are THREE remarkable things about this story. ONE, that me Jon and Tom all made it through to the second round. TWO, me and Jon somehow ended up being given exactly the same assignment! We're both in the same group...
Genre: Romance
Word: Weak
Action: Playing a guitar
And THREE, we've actually written pretty similar stories. I mean, they're not exactly the same obviously, but there are a lot of similarities. It's almost as if recording a podcast about writing every week for 9 months has somehow got us in sync! Anyway, read them and judge for yourself...
The Birthday Song
He smiled as the nurse entered carrying the guitar. He tried to say thank you, but words were just another delicate memory. She sat him up in bed, a pillow to support his weak, wrinkled, tortoise neck. He felt the smooth wood on his lap, could smell the polished spruce over the disinfectant and stale food that lingered in the corridors.
Somewhere in his mind it was 1964, a party in London. She came with a friend, looked so shy, so beautiful. He’d brought his guitar, he always did, but that day he also brought a new song. He’d picked up the single on Oxford Street, spent the whole afternoon listening and learning. He played it to her. It was her birthday. He’d played it to her on every birthday since, nearly sixty years. The last five in this building, but this was the first time in this room. Alone.
More words faded to drool, but the will in his eyes was all the nurse needed to see. She carefully moved his fingers, painfully bent by arthritis, it took a while to get all four of them in place. He nodded and she strummed.
In her room a nurse was feeding her a crumb of cake, a candle lying on the plate. The sound of Fadd9 drifted through the walls, into her ears and hugged her soul. Just one chord and she knew that he loved her still and that their love, like A Hard Day’s Night, would live forever.