[Stylist] Request for feedback on flash fiction piece

Tue Oct 1 21:54:01 UTC 2019

Hi everyone,
Happy first day of October!
I am taking a short story class, in which we are currently working on flash fiction. This, for these of you who don't know, is a very very short story, and can be 1 to 3 pages in length. 
I wrote the following story for my class last week. My class workshops them without much feedback. This story is currently the one I'm happiest with of all of them. I'm considering possibly submitting it for publication for one of my school's fiction maga"es. 
Any feedback would be appreciated. The story is pasted below.
Vejas Vasiliauskas
Short Story 4: The Piano Room

"I'm so claustrophobic in here," moaned Carys.  "I have better things to do than be here.  My boyfriend, Ralph, for example.  Whom I could hang out more with, if it weren't for you and this stupid..." She slumped down with shame.

This monologue shocked me.  Carys Lamb was most certainly not my best student: in fact, she was one of the worst.  She only showed up because her parents forced her to, and I often had to tell her, "Sorry, I'm not yawning because of you, I'm yawning because I'm tired." She played with a scowl, but at least she played.  In an odd way, I was happy that she snapped and felt comfortable expressing her feelings.  And yet, there was a part of me that wanted to tell her that she was my last appointment of the day, that if it weren't for her I could leave this room earlier and bake Snicker-Doodles.

She had a point that the room was claustrophobic.  When this house had been built 50 years ago, my parents had little concept of AC.  I always kept the door closed for privacy of lessons.  The room consisted of only an upright piano, a bench and one soft cushioned chair, for myself.  The chair was positioned close enough to the piano that I could reach it if necessary.  Carys was currrently attempting to play Mozart's "Piano Sonata No.  10 in C" a piece she chose through vaguely liking one of her father's classical albums.  But liking the sound of it was obviously different to actually playing it, and despite us working for 3 months she had just grasped the second section the session before.

"I'm sorry you feel this way, Carys," I said finally.

"Can I please leave? My parents have already paid you for the month."

Seeing a pupil having such a blaséttitude about piano made me sad.  I thought of my father, who was a piano instructor himself, and how comments like this would have broken him.

My father wasn't actually a piano player by trade.  He was a lawyer, who had to drive first a half hour to the train station, then one hour by train to get to his office.  Piano had always been his true love, and he would have persued it as a career, too, had his parents not demanded more of him.  My parents had five children in all, which a meager income as a piano teacher would not have been able to support.  So he taught in this small room every Saturday, and for the first part of the morning every other Sunday.

"I don't care what your father thought," Carys said coldly.  Oh, had I said that out loud?

"Most of my father's students had to pay for lessons out of their own pocket, back then.  Naturally they therefore took playing much more seriously."

"Well, it's a new generation."

"I have lots of fond memories of this place," I mused.  "On Sunday evenings it was our special time.  You see, that's when my father taught me.  We had hundreds of classical cassettes.  If I wanted to play a piece I liked from any one of the cassettes, I could, but boy did I have to work at it.  We'd have gotten through this in...  four sessions, probably."

"Did you practice?"

"Yes, of course! How else could I do well? You remember he wasn't a teacher full-time? When he was away, for work...  that's when I practiced.  It was a minimum of 30 minutes, but I could still be seen passionately playing after two hours."

"Well, that's great," Carys snapped.  "So  you like to play piano.  I get it.  Well, times have changed, as your dad would undoubtedly say.  Parents force their children into an interest in music at about two and a half.  Then every day, it's "Have you practiced?" Look, I've had enough, and you going all sentimental is doing nothing to change my attitude.  If anything, it aggravates me even more.  So I'm off to my boyfriend's."

She got up and I wouldn't, couldn't stop her.

Carys opened the door, and just as I thought she'd be out of my sight forever, she turned back and said, "Do you know something? I'm so claustrophobic when I'm in here.  Claustrophobic people get dizzy easily in confined spaces.  Just saying."  
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