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This blog is dedicated to the literary/psychological practice of free writing based on inspiration from random pictures. For every picture posted, write a random story about what the picture brings to your mind. The idea should come quickly, but you can spend however much time you would like on writing out your story. I suggest 30 minutes, but you are free to write longer or shorter. Enjoy!
George never got his way. Every time he wanted to waddle on a lily pad, Kevin would push the lily pad under water. Every time he shuffled his little webbed feet as fast he could to Mother’s welcoming wings, Kevin would knock him over and get there first. Will it ever end?
ReplyDeleteAs young ducklings, George and Kevin were about the same age and physique. They spent most of their time together, since there were no other ducklings to play with. And naturally, the more time they spent together, the more they picked on each other. This didn’t bode well for young George for he wasn’t the fighting type. He saw the world through the eyes of an aspiring artist; always looking at the wondrous phenomena Mother Nature provided him. Kevin, on the other hand, was a simpleminded, brutish, spartan of duckling. He didn’t see the world; he saw George… as a rival. Every waking moment of their three week lifespan, it appeared to George as though Kevin swore a morning oath to perpetually beat George into submission and one day reign over him as King of the Ducklings.
One day, little George was studying his mother flying with the other ducks and analyzing their V-shape style of flight. It seemed odd to him that if you could fly, why would you not fly freely across the Heavens rather than strictly in the direction the other ducks were flying? And while completely entranced in thought and subconsciously flapping his wings as if he could fly like his Mother, Kevin took advantage of his down defenses and charged his brother, striking him right under the wing. A surge of pain coursed through George’s body as he toppled over into the mud. Trying to collect himself and address Kevin, he couldn’t hold down his rage to even think clearly. His body trembled with anger and as his eyes squinted into a show of hatred, he charged his brother with all the power his little legs could muster. Kevin, still reveling in his recent victory and recounting the many other victories under his wing, was clueless as to what was about to happen. And before he could dodge this little yellow puff of fury barreling down on him, George smashed headfirst into Kevin’s side sending him half flying, half falling twice the distance he was just thrown.
Kevin just lay there in complete shock and embarrassment. He had been defeated. It only took one loss to strip him of his pride. Humiliation sweep over him. George, realizing what he had just done, looked blankly at his brother. For at the same moment, he felt joy and sorrow; he crushed his brother’s resolve, but just couldn’t bear to look at him like this. And as Kevin finally got up and purposefully stood and turned his head, averting his brother’s eyes, George wobbled over to him and licked the salty tears of a defeated duckling off his beak. For however much he couldn’t stand his brother, he would always love him even more.
It was two hours after Willy Haagensan left St. Vincent’s Home for the Elderly before security caught wind of the breakout. “Should we call the cops?” Josh Braston rather cautiously suggested. He was new and anxious to ask the right questions and say the right things. “Naw,” Billy Dean drawled. He was the old-timer, and had been there longer than most people remembered. “Sometimes, Josh, this is how it ends. Some people need to leave here in order to leave here, if you know what I mean.” Josh nodded furiously, having absolutely no idea what Billy meant.
ReplyDeleteTwo miles down the dusty Country Road 69, Willy Haagensan was attempting to hitchhike. His faded red flannels and tattered corduroys hung loosely and drably on his feeble body, like a sheet on a scarecrow. It had been many sparse and unappetizing meals since Willy’s clothes fit. Elaine was alive then; and Richie.
The horizon was a bleak and ragged line of vacant cornfields and dilapidated homes. It took Willy until the third mile to realize Country Road 69 was no longer used. Perhaps it hadn’t been used for twenty years
Willy Haagensan was a Dust Bowl survivor: a child of one of the few families that retained their homes and farms in Oklahoma during the devastation. Neither the financial hardship nor the corporate buy-outs could budge the Haagensan clan. Their wallets weren’t bulging and their children weren’t always educated, but the family remained. Willy was one of those children, bred in the hard and coarse landscape of the American Midwest.
The barn Willy passed wasn’t the half-decayed, half-looted ramshackle it would appear to most; instead, his mind’s eye transformed it to the glorious past. To Willy, it was the most developed farm in Oakville, Oklahoma in 1950, and belonged to the Haagensan’s neighbors, the Jacobson’s. Even the stench from the rotted well and old cattle shit didn’t allow Willy to see anything but the spot he first kissed Gracie, on a moonlit heat of a summer midnight.
The entire abandoned neighborhood was a scathing illustration of a younger generation rejecting their fathers’ history. Not one farm nearby was operational. Even the apple of Willy’s eye, Richie, killed in a car accident in the nearest city sixty-five miles away, wasn’t there to save the town, to save the Haagensan’s farm – to save old Willy.
In a moment, Willy came upon his home: his family’s home for over a hundred years. The “No Looters” sign was sprinkled with expletives and curiously creative and suggestive drawings. The second floor seemed to have given up its years-long fight with gravity, and only half of it remained above the first-floor. Willy had been looking forward to the creaking of the gate, but the gate no longer remained in place. It was tossed a hundred feet or so to the left, half of it charred.
Willy shuffled his tired way to the barn behind the house. The barn alone lacked the depths of depression that hung over everything else. It seemed almost as if someone had kept it in order over the past years. The paint was less chipped, the structure less affected by years of rotting. There was even one sad wooden chair, settled in the corner, by the old chicken coop.
This is where the police found old Willy two days later, sitting in his faded green chair. For a moment, Officer Giles thought Willy had died sitting straight up and staring at the floor. But as he moved closer, he realized the man was still alive. With all of the energy left in him, Willy was staring at two bright yellow chicks, playing on the barn’s floor. As Giles approached cautiously, Willy didn’t take his eye from the scene before him. He simply stated in an amazed and clear voice, “How the hell are these two chicks here? Where’s the mum? Who’s been feeding them?”
Willy was dead before they placed his weary body on the weary ambulance’s stretcher.