Prompt #115
Four Stories
Hi, hi, hi.
You all are so great! It’s such a pleasure to come back to this page—especially when I’ve been out of town and unable to contribute—to find you chatting away and holding one another up. Thanks for all of it—if no one popped up in the comments, I wouldn’t post these prompts. My constant travel is ending soon, though I do have one more trip planned this month. So great to know this thing carries on so well in my absence.
On another note, many of you already saw this on Story Club, but for those who did not, a little story I wrote won a contest at Writers’ Hour Magazine. Here’s a link to the story: “Poof.”
And here’s something I wrote a few weeks ago:
Four Stories About Mothers
In the first story, the mother is very pretty and kind. She loves all her children. She works her fingers to the bone to keep everyone fed and clothed, but she doesn’t mind. This is her life and her love. This is what she was born to do.
In the second story, the mother is also pretty. But she isn’t all that kind. She loves all her children, but she dreams of the days when she had no children, when she was free to do what she wanted. Still, she understands that this is now her life and she accepts it. She wants to be kind to her children, but it’s very hard and a lot of the time, she fails.
In the third story, the mother is kind but not pretty. She wishes she could be as pretty as the other mothers, but it is not to be. She worries that her own children are not pretty, and she does everything she can think of to make them pretty. It is a hard job, but it’s so very important and she doesn’t want to fail. She does it out of kindness, buying them all the surgeries and the clothes and the makeup. She does it out of love.
In the fourth story, the mother is neither pretty nor kind. She does not know if she loves her children, though she feeds them and clothes them. She is waiting for them to grow up as they exhaust her completely. Her children, in return, are waiting for her to die.
I don’t remember what was my impetus for writing this story, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. I write about my own mother a lot, so maybe I was simply in a mother mood. Perhaps one day, she will stop haunting me. But probably not. In this story about four mothers, she is all of them at once.
Today, we’re not writing about mothers (unless you want to). Instead, we’re going to use the structure I employed to write our stories.
TODAY’S PROMPT
Choose a subject. (Need help? Fathers, sisters, pets, restaurants, knives, neighbors, love…)
Now write “Four Stories About _______” (Fill in the blank with your subject.)
If four is too many, write three stories! Or even two. Or go crazy and write SIX.
Have fun with this one. Use that big imagination of yours that loves to come out onto the page.
That’s it! That’s the whole prompt.
See you next time!
Note: Stories posted in the comments that exceed 400 words will most likely not be read by yours truly.
This mother was a sow named Greta. She was old and fat and had produced many a litter of pink squiggling piglets that latched on to her teats and sucked away for dear life. Because life is dear, Greta said to herself. When my little ones are scrambling all over me, I'm alive. If one of them isn't getting his share and is in danger of becoming the runt of the litter, I do all I can to help him get what he needs. It's not easy for a fat old sow to do that, but I try. Life is so very dear.
The next mother was a whale named Gudrun. She was young and didn't know what was happening to her when her calf began to move in her belly. She had heard old stories and thought it might be Jonah trying to get out, though she couldn't for the life of her remember when she'd swallowed him. The older mother whales gathered round and put her mind to rest. It's your little one, they boomed (whales do boom, but as gently as seaweed fronds waving in the flow). Afterwards, Gudrun kept her calf beside her. He suckled often and grew. He learned to boom. Gudrun was so full of her life and his that she called him Plenty.
Another mother was called Pirool. She was given that name because she was an oriole, and orioles do so pirool when they are twenty in a big cherry-tree laden with glossy fruit. She'd laid four eggs in a nest hanging from a branch – she'd built it with her mate – and now she had four youngsters to watch over and teach to stay out of sight in the deep leaf-cover of the treetops. Three of her birdies were males, and she knew their yellow and black plumage would one day draw the unwelcome attention of cats and rats and probably hunters too. Stay high, she told them. Keep calling me, as I call you, and we all flute and pirool together, singing in praise of black cherries bursting with juice!
Four Stories about a House
1. In the first place, I've never lived in a four-story house. The first house I remember living in was a rented farmhouse with no running water, no electricity. It had a pond where I sat with my cat watching frogs. I was three years old.
2. In the second place, the house of my dreams has three stories. What I mean is I used to dream about a house in which I would wander from room to room. I loved that house. I was always finding something new to love about it. Then when I was in my fifties, I literally bought that house and didn't realize it was the house I always dreamed about until I had the dream while I was living in it.
3. In the third place, I've never lived above the second floor. In my house with three stories, the third story was actually an attic, but it had a tower, and I loved to go up there and look out. I wanted to convert the attic to an actual living space, but I had to give up the house when I suddenly became disabled and couldn't afford to keep it any more.
4. In the fourth place, I wouldn't want a four story house. Who wants to clean all those rooms? Not me. I'm happy in my little ranch house now. Although I would love to have a three-story tower built on the end of the house so I would. have a view of Mt. Hood. It's there, but there's a two story house across the street blocking my view.