Once upon a time in a country far away there was a drum. From all outward appearances it seemed ordinary. Its sides were made of a common wood in that region, roughhewn, so one could easily get a splinter if the hand was run up then down the side. The drum head looked as if nothing was odd about it either, as it was made of goat skin stretched over the top as was common with the drums of that region. The ties holding the different parts of the drum together were made out of the fibers found in the center of stinging nettle plants just like every other drum in the village and the surrounding area, though there were only two other villages within twenty miles of the drum’s village. But without fail whenever people saw it they would get a feeling they could only describe as odd radiating from the drum whenever it was played. It was not a decidedly good feeling, but not entirely bad,always a mix of both almost as if the drum could not decide what it wanted to feel like, changing its mood every few seconds.
It was old to be sure; all the village elders remembered it being there when they were small, and some even remembered the elders before them telling the story of when it was made when they were just toddlers learning to walk. All though, were puzzled at why the drum would feel so strange. Theories were considered and tried but all were discarded as impossible in the end. Stories were told of the strange aura the drum gave off growing more outrageous as time went on.
Many years later the drum sat in the chief elder’s hut. The rumors had gotten so outrageous that one grossly radical group was willing to throw the peoples’ oldest relic in the river, to see it destroyed. Some villagers claimed there was a demon living inside of it, the cause of the evil feelings they claimed radiated from the drum. Others claimed the gods had blessed the drum and the ancestors protected it from those unworthy to behold the sacred item. Each side felt so passionately about the drum’s true reason for the humanlike aura coming from it they declared war on the other side. Families were turned against each other, brothers slaughtering sisters considered corrupted by evil powers. The war only lasted a few months, but by the end both sides had wiped each other out, wounding and killing their friends and neighbors, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters in the name of the drum.
Still the drum sat in the chief elder’s hut, the blood of its caretakers and enemies, all children of its creators, running crimson into the earth. It was in the only hut in the village left standing, surrounded by death and grisly carnage buried for years afterward by Mother Nature in unmarked graves. Not one plant grew there atop the ashes of houses and remains of bodies, dirt around them forever stained the color of blood. Only a single pitch black stone thrust up from the ground, a pillar of dark memorial for the destroyed lives created out of the hates and fears each side held unto death. The last man, wounded past the point of recovery yet still hanging on to life, carved the story of the drum into the pillar as a memorial to those who had died there. As soon as he finished carving the last word he killed himself. The pain of the total annihilation of all he knew and cared for when seen in words was too much for him to handle.
Yet the drum still lived on. One could say it was cursed because of the bloodshed caused in its name and there was a demon living inside of it. One could also say it was a holy item because it eliminated the unworthy who were willing to kill those dear to them for the survival of a simple drum. Neither theory was correct. From the creation of the drum it had always been the same as any other one. The only thing that set it apart from the rest was the sturdy, well-made craftsmanship put into it. The odd feeling people got when around the drum was their subconscious working the stories into a reality, one so convincing they actually believed it to be true. It is lost to time who started the stories and for what reason they were created and thrived. All that is known is the terrible fate those who believed in the drum’s power endured. All of the other villages stayed ignorant of the event, keeping the events surrounding the drum a secret for centuries to come.