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# Pleading the Fifth
- URL: https://martinsmithstories.ghost.io/pleading-the-fifth/
- Published: 2026-03-15T02:22:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-13T21:28:09.000Z
- Description: A composer is enraged when he receives an unexpected composition prompt.
- Author: Martin Smith
- Tags: Book 3: The Cannibal's Guide to Health and Wellbeing

LB flew in a rage about the room. How could they! After he'd waited for weeks in eager anticipation and restless impatience for his shot at eternal glory. It just wasn’t fair.

He pounded his forehead on his keyboard. All he’d hoped for was something simple to stir his imagination to craft an ode to the sheer joy of sitting fireside on those long dark nights of winter, toes toasty and tipple in hand, while snowdrifts of pure white piled at the windowsill.

But now this! He gnashed his teeth. How was he meant to respond to *this*? To create a piece immortal and beloved? To *this*?! He looked over at his goldfish in their glass bowl and said, ‘Applaud, friends, the comedy is over!’

He tore at his hair. To think that in this day and age of diversity and inclusion, where one and all—regardless of their faith, gender, sexual orientation, culture, race, age, political beliefs, neurodiversity, education, socioeconomic status or disability—were welcomed, indeed encouraged, to enter, he was being excluded. All because of *his* disability.

He rent his robe. Good God! It reeked of ableism. He’d a mind to cancel his membership! To contact *60 Minutes*! To take it all the way to the International Criminal Court!

He picked up his “World’s Best Composer” mug and threw it in fury at the window, only for both to shatter. His “Employee of the Month” plaque from the Archduke followed a similar fate. And the cause of his rage? That bloody prompt that’d just arrived in his mailbox. A Winter Solstice Writing Challenge. A challenge with a twist, they’d smugly promoted, a “Cadenza” challenge asking him to let a music composition lead him on a journey.

He shook an angry fist heavenward and cursed the good Lord’s name. Just click on the sound bite provided, they directed, and away you go. The gall of them! To have the temerity to simply *presume* that everyone could *hear*!

But what to do? The wise words of his father quelled his rage. *Never write angry*, he’d cautioned a son. Yes, take a deep breath, LB, and—Hey, what the hell did his father know?! The man had never had a bother in his life, let alone been confronted with a “Cadenza” challenge in the depths of a cold, miserable winter. No, it was time to call these tin-eared bastards out! Time to take a stand! Time to get even! No, no, not even. No, it was time to get *odd*.

LB took up his goose quill, dipped it in his inkwell, paused to gather his rage into a tsunami and then wrote:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c6/c8/c6c8435c-4b96-43fa-84da-e74c3e08d925/content/images/2026/09/Screenshot-2026-09-13-053954-1.png)