Melancholy Musicians

Gotta be fast. A comrade is lying in the sand, bleeding out. The bandits are still close by though so extra caution is needed for this to work. Can the comrade be sneaked out of the danger and patched up in time or do we need to add one more gravestone in this forsaken world?

“Grab my hand, comrade!” I yelled out. “I don’t like sand! It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere!” “Just grab my hand, and let’s get out of here! There are too many of them!” A voice came out from the trees — it’s the Vietnamese bandits! We have to get out.

Bandits? We are troubadours! We roam the land singing the songs of our people, to our people. (To anyone who will listen, really.) Sure, we can throw down when we need to defend ourselves. But the only things we steal are hearts!

Troubadours? More like troublemakers! And heart stealers are not welcome in my books, oh no, there will be no Aztec savages! Unlike you, I steal bones, not hearts, because the average person has one heart, but hundreds of bones! Now get ye merry band of bandits out of here!

And so the bandits left, dejected, heart-broken. Some would even go on to suffer clinical depression. Alicia, the most hurt of the musical mischief-makers, found herself years later laying on the couch of a certain Dr. Mislym, pouring out her heart & asking "Will I ever be well?"

"In due time," Dr. Mislym intoned while fussing with her metronome. "What upset you most?" Alicia was about to answer when she noticed Dr. Mislym cracking her knuckles at the piano. "No!" Alicia screamed as she recognized the terrifying melody again, this time in Rallentando.