Greetings, everyone! I know I haven’t been posting much. I have been writing a lot, even outside of school, but that’s mostly been fiction.
And I usually don’t share fiction on this Substack. But this year I want that to change. A week or two ago I came up with a New Year’s goal: write 24 stories in 2026, ideally two each month, and publish them all on Conception. Since 24 for 2026 is rather unsatisfying, and since I happen to have two short stories from 2025 that I haven’t shared on here, I’ll publish those too, so I can say that I published 26 stories in 2026! :) I’m not sure when I’ll fit those in, probably if I ever reach a busy spot this semester where I don’t have the brain power to write original material.
The goal here is not to write stories that are polished or even very good. It is simply to force myself to write more, and to write more consistently. It is also to debut myself as a fiction writer on Substack so to speak since I haven’t really done that yet. In fact you could say the ultimate goal is really to make people interested in my (eventually). upcoming book, The Sun-King, which I also plan to finish this year. I also want to practice consistency and generally take the chance to challenge myself as a writer. So we’ll see what this year holds and whether I’m able to accomplish my goals!
I wrote the following story today, in a few hours, without a real plan beforehand. I didn’t know I would write a short story about music, but it came to mind probably since I had just been listening to some lovely covers by a K-pop vocalist that I really enjoyed. With this story I aimed specifically to create a vignette, which a sketch of a single moment or scene. I probably overstepped those qualifications a bit, but it was nice not feeling the pressure to create a strong plot or even any real narrative. I mainly tried to explore the emotions one might have in Jamie’s situations, and accentuate the mood through my imagery and descriptions.
Jamie’s Silence
A man grasped a mic in an empty recording studio. In this moment, he enjoyed the quiet. A gratuitous sunset was falling over the city, gleaming gold over the dusty speakers and tangled heaps of cords. The sunlight was the only light in the room.
“And I will always love you…” he whispered into the mic, even though it was turned off. He could see his reflection in the glass window that formed the opposing wall. He looked young and fit, and he was, though lately he felt older.
You haven’t got forever, Jamie, he sighed to himself. Now you know.
He continued mouthing lyrics to himself, out of habit deemphasizing his p’s and b’s so they wouldn’t pop uncomfortably in the mic.
Singing, he had always thought, was like drinking clear water, or sweet tea with honey, but in reverse. His throat was filled with something wholesome and fresh, but it left his mouth instead of entering it. Instead of filling himself, he emptied his lungs of oxygen, so that notes could cascade through the air with full force. It was the best pleasure Jamie knew. There were so many aspects of singing to relish—the satisfaction of difficult melodies becoming easy and automatic with practice. The freedom to add a dozen different subtleties, making the song his own. The empty but relieved feeling after the song was over.
He ran his fingertip over the mic’s familiar texture and calmed his thoughts to listen to the traffic in the city below, only a hushed hum from here. The sun continued to set— it had almost disappeared behind the high-rises across the street.
One stray gleam of light winked off the corner of a CD, the topmost of a pile of CDs arranged haphazardly on the corner of Vic’s desk. On that desk sat the computer where the most recent tracks resided, the ones recorded in this studio. There were many more tracks stored on Vic’s battered laptop at home. They had set up the new studio a good seven months ago, but of course Jamie in particular had not set foot in it for quite some time.
Jamie left the mic stand and walked over to the CD pile, picking up the one that the light had drawn to his attention. The front cover was a splash of colors; on the other side, he and Vic were sitting back to back, the tracklist underneath them, a ukulele in Jamie’s hands. This was their first album. “I thought no one listened to CDs anymore!” Mom had said. “Well, they ought to,” Vic said. He was adamant that everything the Parker Brothers released should be available in physical form. “I want our music to last as long as it can, in any way it can.”
So much for that.
Jamie set the CD back on its pile. The peace of the studio had soured for him. He put his hands to his throat, trying to feel the vocal cords under his skin.
The sun set, and as shadows crowded into the room, so did memories. Him and Vic when they were small, enthusiastically yelling the lyrics to the inappropriate pop songs Dad played in the guitar, then years later standing side by side at a mic stand in church, then a few more years and they were on a street corner, a crowded friend’s house, a pub, that amphitheater in the park on that one day it thundered, then a proper stage, small, and then later, larger stages. The memories became even more specific— their stuffy bedroom, where he practiced chord progressions till his fingers ached and Vic fumed over Logic Pro. Sitting in the living room humming melodies the day after a concert, while rain fell softly outside. That time they had Paula join them on stage, with her violin. Meeting fans who were total strangers—that was weird.
They had never been a big thing, never toured out of state. Seven months ago, this had bothered Jamie.
He had worse things to bother him now. Like the pain it took to summon a whisper, or the look in the surgeon’s eyes when he told Jamie that a mistake had been made, that things—most likely—would never be the same again.
The look in Vic’s eyes when he heard the news was even worse.
Jamie suddenly crouched down, willing the shadows to wash over him like water. He sighed, deeply, just to make some sound.
Why must it be so silent? Was there a melody embedded somewhere in this quiet, something to lift him out of this gloom? If the speakers had been on there would have at least have been some kind of warm hum in the room, some kind of companion. But he could hear only his own breath, jagged, disappointing, and the distant rush of traffic, too distant, too hushed to console him.
He strained his ears, but there was no song in the silence. And he could no longer fix that.
He could no longer reach out into the silence like a child reaching for a star and fill the room with light summoned from heaven.
By now it was almost completely dark in the studio. Various song lyrics pranced unbidden through Jamie’s mind.
“April, come she will…”
“I’ve never been in love before…”
“In the morning when I wake and the sun is coming through, you fill my lungs with sweetness, and you fill my head with you…”
“You’d kill yourself for recognition, kill yourself to never ever stop.”
He wanted to swear but couldn’t.
Finally something broke the silence—his phone buzzed. It was Vic.
Jamie rose and made his way to the door, careful not to trip on any cords. Would he ever have reason to come in here again? He could still strum a guitar—but the Parker brothers would never be the same without both voices, rising and falling together, one rough, one sweet. Maybe Vic could get Paula to join for real.
It was quiet in the hallway, and in the elevator too. There was a woman who was also going down. Jamie would have usually said something friendly, but of course there was nothing to say.
The car, smelly as usual, was filled with heat and Vic. He shoved Jamie in the shoulder, masking the gloom.
“You all good? Have a good look? Boy, I haven’t even been in there for ages. I got pizza and some nice drinks for when we get home… you’ll see…”
Vic stopped talking for only a moment, craning his neck as he pulled out into traffic. Jamie smiled and nodded. The radio was too loud, but he didn’t turn it down like he would usually.
“Hey! Things are gonna improve, you know that. P. T. starts tomorrow, right? Oh, and Paula’s got that recital next week, you gonna come? Things are… things are gonna be okay, Jamie. I’m sorry if I ever overreacted… I just know we both care so much about the music.”
From the studio window it seemed the sun had set, but the slightest bit of gold still tinted the dusk, making the cars around them gleam. Jamie nodded again. It was something.
Thank you for reading, everyone! I will remind you again that this story was slightly low-effort, but I welcome any comments.
Ko-fi to support: https://ko-fi.com/annabeth13
Here’s a mood board I made for this story, just for fun. Let me know if I captured the aesthetic well!
And the songs Jamie recalls are: