Rosso's story
My morning writing has shifted to mid-day, because of all the non-writerly things I have to do these days. Today I picked up a random picture as a prompt, and here’s what I wrote in 5 minutes of timed writing:
He held me up by the ears, my father, just as if I were a giant rabbit at an auction, a rabbit as big as the pig he named me after, Rosso.
But that is not the story.
The story is also not, for example, that my father loved the sound of Italian names, and named his biggest, fattest pig, Rosso, or red, in Italian.
It is also not that my ears grew longer with each hanging, and I grew to be a big, fat, pink man with long pointy ears that drooped when I was afraid. Which was whenever my father was in the room.
The story is that I talked back at my father today, and he a strong man still at sixty, lifted my twenty-eight year old body, that weighed 200 pounds, up by the ears, clear off the floor. He then stamped at me and said Sush! just the way he had done all my life, Sush! he said , go and bury your nose in whatever book it came out of, you fat pig! But today I figured I am as big as him and must be as strong and why can’t I Sush him back?
Which is just what I did. I sushed him and Sushed him, and I felt happy that I was as big as he was, no, bigger, and in the end I sushed him well.
He’s on the floor now, very quiet. Rosso the pig is no longer around, but his offspring flourish in my father’s backyard. I will take him to them.
And that, my friends, is the story.
Chilling and well-told, Damyanti. Very powerful. All this from the picture of a huge rabbit? Wow.
It is just writing practice. Am glad you find it powerful and all those things. Maybe I should take up horror
?
Well done! Amazing, it took me longer than that to read it!
Thanks Gladys!
I write stuff all the time in speed bursts, so have become quite used to it.
250 words in 5 mins is quite normal, and if the prompt speaks to me, the piece seems to resonate with others, like this one.
I know it’s pointless to ask where stories such as this come from. It’s all on a mysterious folded sheet in your mind, a sheet that you’re writing on and unfolding at the same time. Better not to question, I suppose; just keep doing it. But it is fascinating all the same. Wonderfully-written.
Thanks!
Yeah, some stories just write themselves. I know this one did. In fact most of my stories seem to do that, and I just take down the dictation from wherever