short fiction · 2026-10-28

The Tuning Fork

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

She struck it against her knee, not the table — bone conducts cleaner than wood. The note hung: A above middle C, 440 cycles each second, measured against nothing but itself.

The room held its breath. Dust motes stalled in the shaft of afternoon light. Her cat's ears rotated, tracking the invisible wave.

Forty seconds. Fifty. The vibration thinned, not faded — grew purer as the overtones fell away, leaving only the fundamental. She watched the tines blur, a hummingbird's wings frozen in the photograph.

When silence finally returned, it was not the silence from before. The air remembered. Her fingers still tingled where metal had kissed bone.