Anime stories, articles and discussion

The gleaming saxophone animation appears prettily before me on my screen glinting brightly. She exists, she is perfect, she is anime and she is my creation. She looks to the left and then to the right nonchalantly .

All around me, the office is silent. The other animation workstations are dark and, outside the skyscraper offices where I work, the early evening traffic is humming with people returning home.

A few key strokes and another animated figure appears on my screen.

Mr Clarinet stands upright, dark and suave and already aware of the young, attractive saxophone only a few pixels away. His voice is rich and mellifluous, almost pompous, but there is an undercurrent of sadness.

"And who might you be waiting for, my dear?"

Ms Sax pouts delicately, inclines her swan neck shaped body gently in his direction and examines her freshly painted fingernails, dismissively.

"Who I wait for is my business. Why not get lost. Go and play some jazz or something and get out of my hair." Her tone is contemptuous She doesn't care about him and she doesn't mind making that clear.

"I saw you cozying up to the lead wind player during rehearsals, this morning," Mr Clarinet spluttered petulantly. "You made it obvious what you want!"

Ms Sax steps elegantly towards the old clarinet, then leans forward aggressively to emphasize her point.

"Yes I know what I want. I want to feel his fingers playing up and down my body, caressing and challenging me and raising me to the point of ecstasy. I want to feel his lips pressing against my mouthpiece and his warm breath filling fill me up."

Mr Clarinet shrinks back, his face contorted in agony.

"Don't torture me," he screams, shrilly. "You know I love him too! For me he is the best player in the orchestra. I can't live without him touching me and recently he just can't get enough of you. I'm left in my instrument case all day, alone, neglected and cast aside. It's all your fault!"

"Should I worry, should I heck," she spits. "Admit it, you're just dead wood and well past it, defunct, out-of-date and on the shelf. You'll probably end up in some secondhand shop until some beginner musician buys you out of pity. Rock on baby and think of the torture, split notes, used for weeks without cleaning, keys dented, body scratched and the same agonizingly simple piece of music played over and over again, really badly, again and again and again!"

Mr Clarinet is pleading now, his voice wheedling "Couldn't you just fluff a note every now and then. Just one little note? It would be so easy."

"Easy for you, Mr Clarinet, but impossible for me! I'm just too good. My pitch is perfect and after he's been playing me, lots of people come up to him and say how lovely the music sounded. They wouldn't do that if he was playing a crummy old clarinet!"

A silver animated music stand suddenly appears on the screen, bouncing up and down with excitement. Her voice is shrill and urgent and, around her, sheet music flies off in all directions.

"Come on, come on ladies and gentlemen. No hanging about. We have lots of new music to play with a new conductor who has just joined our orchestra. It's soooo exciting! He's a specialist in Baroque and early English music using traditional instruments. Come on Mr Clarinet. You're on center stage."

A big smile spreads across Mr Clarinet's face. He takes the arm of the music stand and jauntily walks off the side of the screen. Ms Sax's face crumples and a big tear rolls down her sleek, shiny gold body as she disappears slowly in the opposite direction.

The End

This short story is copyright Rob Hopcott, 2007, all rights reserved. All characters in this short anime story are fictitious and no reference is intended to any person living or otherwise.