Prompt # 120
I lost it.
Hi!
(We did a version of this same prompt about a year ago. Hopefully, your memory is as poor as mine and you’ve forgotten all about it!)
I can’t remember anything. Well, that’s not exactly true. I remember things, but not as they actually happened. That time I got lost at the Seattle World’s Fair actually happened—just not to me. (It was my brother who was lost. But I would have bet my bottom dollar it was me! Nope.)
Memory is a crazy thing!
I’m not the only one with a memory that is off-kilter. Here’s a video from John Green that I love:
(An aside: Have you read Everything is Tuberculosis? Take a look!)
Over the course of my life, I’ve lost many more things than memories. I’ve lost parents and friends. I’ve lost faith in myself (and found it again) (repeat). I’ve lost rings and necklaces and recipes. I’ve lost my patience, certain books, the file where I kept old letters I wanted to keep safe.
Well, you get the point.
Here’s a story for you: “The Things I’ve Lost,” by Brian Arundel. I love this story for its simplicity and its depth. It’s basically a “list” story, which we’ve done in the past around here.
A snippet:
The chance, in 1986, to meet Raymond Carver: the only person invited to sit in on an interview, I instead drank all night with friends and overslept. A quarter-inch off the tip of my left thumb, in 1987, while slicing Muenster cheese on an electric Hobart slicer.
As soon as I read those words, I remember my own lost opportunity to see Prince in New York City because I decided to stay behind while my students were bussed to an “afternoon concert.” No one told us what the concert was, and I had things to do, like the NY Times crossword puzzle… My loss.
Another story for you, this one fictional: Edwin Manu’s “Family History, Preserved in a Hole in the Ground.”
It starts like this:
“Things go missing all the time in our house.”
Yes, mine, too. I love this tiny story for what it has to say about lost things.
Okay, time for the prompt.
TODAY’S PROMPT
Write your own story about “lost things.”
Yours can be a list story, like Arundel’s, where you name things lost over a period of time.
Or you can write a tiny story about one thing that was lost.
Or you can write whatever you want!
Anything goes: Lost your mind, lost your faith in God, in love, in humanity, you name it, lost all your money, lost your passport, lost your way home…
(Four hundred words max. in the comments section if you want me and others to read your story.)
See you next week!
Note: A little story of mine, “Dead Game,” was published last month at HAD. Take a look! (Aaron Burch, the editor of HAD, can also be found at Burch Blog and Short Story, Long—both worth your time to check out.)
I lost it. I screamed, shouted, jumped up and down like a three year old having a fantastic tantrum. YES! I lost my temper. Where did it go? Under the rug, hiding in the bathroom, locked in the car?
Did someone steal it? Although without value someone might have taken it. But why? I want it back. Give it back or I'll punch you in the face. Hard really hard.
The other day I lost thirty-four humanoid skulls. When I say lost, I really mean that I don't know where I put them for safe keeping. I didn't want to lose them, but I didn't want to keep them in my room or anything. That might have given rise to conjecture.
Such as, why is he hiding thirty-four skulls with neat bullet-holes in the middle of their foreheads under his bed? Don't look so surprised, I told you... I didn't? Well, these skulls had perfect bullet-holes through their foreheads. At least, most of them did. To tell you the truth, I was just a bit freaked by this obvious fact. The police might come knocking, and I really hated it when they did that. So I quickly hid them away somewhere. In my haste I didn't remember where.
In the deep freeze, maybe, but the deep freeze was full of nice things to eat like ice cream. Salt butter caramel with vanilla, for example. (Americans may have another name for it, but there's been so much bullshit coming out of America lately I'll call it what I like, thank you very much). I took a flashlight and went down to the basement. The basement didn't smell too good, but I think that was what you might call a plumbing leak. Anyway, those skulls were scraped and scrubbed out, clean as a whistle.
I think I said "humanoid"? Because so they were. Dead ringers for human skulls, but smaller. Imagine a cranium the size of a tennis ball. But not plastic or anything. Real authentic vintage humanoid bone. Probably ancient, possibly highly valuable.
I went through the rest of the house. There was no hiding-place in the bathroom – no tub, just the shower, the washbasin, the what-you'd-expect in a corner. So I did look under the bed. Woolly sheep and spiders, no thirty-four skulls. Which were well and truly lost by this time. I gave up searching.
It was night so I picked up some reading and went to bed.
A literary journal. I turned the pages. No, no, no... Stop! What was that?
All my thirty-four small skulls with bullet-holes were there at the top of a page. I didn't know how they'd got there, but so what? It was a relief to know they were off my hands.
That Mary Guterson could do the explaining from now on.