The Robot Trombonist by Matt Leibel

One afternoon at band practice, the robot picked up one of Billy’s bones and brought it to his metal polymer lips. Billy was our first trombonist—but Billy had ears. And after hearing the robot blow just a few bars, Billy knew his days of brass section supremacy were over. Billy bolted from the multipurpose room screaming. He sprinted across campus, through the gym, past the portables, and out to the pool, where our water polo team was battling our biggest cross-county rival. He leapt into the water like a man on fire, nullifying a game-winning goal, and earning a tsunami of ire from the half of our class that gave a rip about aquatic arm soccer and the sleek-bodied teenage mermen who played it. Meanwhile, the robot trombonist took over the top spot. At home games on Friday nights, he quickly became a sensation. He started dating Laney Thomason—intercepting her, as it were, from our starting quarterback. She said he was funny, the robot, didn’t seem machine-like at all—unlike the rest of us predictable, mechanized losers. The robot earned band scholarships from Stanford, Yale, Princeton, and others, but narrowed his search to Alabama, Clemson, and Florida State, because he yearned to perform in front of real gridiron contenders. At halftime of the college national championship game, selected for a rousing solo, the robot broke down at the 50-yard line. Some said it was bad wiring, but I prefer to think it was the emotion of the moment. A nervous, jittery hum pierced through the crowd. Laney ran onto the field to try to repair him; apparently, freeze-ups like this had happened before. But just as she arrived, the robot leapt to his feet, finished the solo, attempted a bended knee, and asked Laney for her hand in marriage. The crowd—ready as ever to turn on a dime for the sake of a good story—erupted in cheers as she nodded yes. Sincere but artificial tears streamed down the robot’s face as the cameras closed in on the happy couple, and “I’ve Got A Feeling” by the Black-Eyed Peas began pulsing through the stadium speakers. In the second half, the starting quarterback got injured: the backup and third stringer too. In desperation, the robot was called in (he’d messed around with the team in practice and could hurl a pigskin half a field easy). He threw for three touchdowns, ran for 46 yards, and even kicked extra points. After the team’s victory, the robot thanked a God he was pre-programmed to believe in, and announced a sponsor-encouraged trip to Disneyland, to meet up with his animatronic brethren. From high above in the bleachers, Billy looked on with wild-eyed envy, the one-man band inside his brain blowing the Fugue of Desire, the Fugue of Regret, and the Fugue of WhatCouldHaveBeen, all in a minor key. He could feel the notes vibrate through the instrument of his body: sadly soulful, insistently human, percussive as a heartbeat.

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MATT LEIBEL — Matt’s short fiction has appeared in Post Road, Electric Literature, Portland Review, The Normal School, Quarterly West, Socrates on the Beach, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, matchbook, and Wigleaf. His work has also been previously anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2024 and Best Microfiction 2025 and 2026. Find him online at mattleibel.com. 

Art by LINDA HAWKINS — Linda is primarily a watercolor artist, who also enjoys photography. She and her husband love to travel and explore the great outdoors. Linda captures their adventures on camera, and as a result has plenty of resource material from which to paint. Her visual art has appeared in various literary magazines, including Flash Frog, The Jupiter Review, Pithead Chapel, Moss Puppy Mag, and Wrongdoing Magazine. You can find her on BlueSky – @lindamayhawkins.bsky.social; Instagram – @lindamayhawkins; or at lindamayhawkins.com.