The Closet

Write a story in which the character is snooping around an ex-boyfriend’s (or girlfriend’s) apartment because he or she still has a key. The whole story takes place in a closet in the bedroom that the narrator retreats to when the ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend comes home with the narrator’s best friend. The narrator must endure, inside the closet, maybe the sounds of this couple making love for the first time or perhaps simply a loving conversation unlike any the narrator has ever had with this former paramour. Describe only what the narrator can see and smell inside the closet and what she can hear and guess is going on outside the closet...you will show us your narrator’s deep sadness or anger or a combination of the two, without having to describe it.

This exercise forces you to blindfold your observer. Every image presented in a piece of prose is like the image this narrator will perceive—imagined, reconstructed, simplified.
(from prompt #23 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:

"Hide and Seek" by Faithful Chant

Oh, R.Kelly. How I wish I could fly. Or piss on someone. Anything besides trapped in the closet. It’s the way they talk, so quietly, as if it’s just the two of them and no one else matters. I mean. I’m not here, as far as they are concerned. But shouldn’t they be concerned? They should be. They talk quietly, they don’t want anyone else to hear them with no one else around. She even laughs quietly. She's in the door frame, he's walking towards the desk. He’s telling her…oh. No. Do not put on Dashboard. If there is anything I hate more than finding out my boyfriend, I mean my ex-boyfriend, is sleeping with my best friend, because apparently my life is a clip they make fun of on The Soup, it’s Dashboard Confessional. Please do not have Dashboard sex.

Chris Carrabba, sing. She giggles, and it’s like he’s tickling her to elicit more. Whatever he is saying, it isn’t much, or loudly, as she and Chris Carrabba wailing “Don’t you see, don’t you see that the charade is over?” are the only sounds, and feet barely moving, skimming the carpet, planting themselves standing. (1) Too close. So much fun she must be having. She must not be paying attention to the music, because it isn’t fun or even funny. A little funny.

“And all the best deceptions and the clever clever story awards go to you.” (1)

She stops, starts to say “I never…” and then he kisses her. Or punches her, who knows. He doesn’t punch her. She just stops and there are no sounds but crescendos of a song for feeling touchy-feely.

“So kiss me hard, because this will be the last time that I let you. You will be back someday, and this awkward kiss that screams of other people’s lips…” (1)

He moves, I hear his arms fall—he was holding her in his arms—and the song changes. Thank God for small mercies. He’s by the desk then, where the picture of us—he was holding me in his arms—used to be, the picture I printed and put in a frame from Ikea and gave to him when I had no money for better gifts. What sits there now, it was…well. Probably nothing yet. He probably moves his hand over the empty space where we used to be and doesn’t notice the absence. Or maybe he does, pauses over the laptop half-bent, remembers, rights himself.

“What do you want to hear?” he asks. Her. She moves over to him now, without the music I can hear her walking with bare feet, a skirt rustle. They are in the corner farthest from me, farthest from the closet, and I can just see through the grates that the skirt is pink and her hair is up, but I cannot see him. She leans into him before she bends to look at the songs, and it’s just a second before it starts to play. They move again, I can’t hear them now but if I squint I see them, broken in my view through the shades. I don’t recognize the song; how is it he has a song I’m unfamiliar with? That she knew to select. They are on the bed, just in front, I close my eyes when I see a pink flag fall from three feet in the air.

“And you feel like something is about to begin, but you don't know what, and you don't know when, so you tear at your hair, and you scratch at your skin.” (2)

I hear them breathing, heavy, with gasps syncopated, she breathes in, he breathes out. It reminds me I have to do the same, I take air in and slowly let it out.

“Caught in your room on a concrete shelf, fighting all alone, with yourself, with yourself, and you just wanna feel like a coin that's been tossed in a wishing well, a wishing well, a wishing well, a wishing well. Well, you're tossed in the air and you fell and you fell through the dark blue waters where you cast your spell, like you were just a wish that could turn out well. So you stand on the corner where the angels sit and you think to yourself, ‘This is it, this is it, this is all that I have, all I can stand is this air in my lungs and this coin in my hand that you tossed in the air and I fell, and I fell all the way to the bottom of the well, of the well, like those soft little secrets that you tell, that you tell to yourself when you think no one's listening too well" (2)

Alarm Clock Dream

Write a short story in which an alarm clock going off in the middle of the story plays some kind of crucial role. Half of the story will be dream and half reality. I don't usually encourage my students to write about dreams (it is very difficult to do it well, and the results are usually clumsy and obvious), but in this case, try to construct a mirror image on either side of this alarm clock sound.

(from prompt # 22 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:


"grab" by wheat in your hair



Medusa appears suddenly, behind me but I can see her, from the corner of my eye or so it seems. I wonder if she’d been there all along. We are at the church, my church, where everyone believes in me and what I might say, before I say anything. It is true, whatever it is I will say. I am on a mission, the most important mission. I have to talk to these people, tell them the truth, and it is just out of reach, the truth is just past my reach. I am busy, I have things to do, and Medusa comes suddenly to my side. Following me and watching me closely as if I am teaching her a dance. She matches my movements. I am aware of her presence now throughout the church, my honey colored church. I have to prepare my words, I have been interrupted while preparing to speak to the people of my church, and as we move through the hallways Medusa gets closer and closer, assuming control. I fall behind her and watch in awe as she speaks to the man who built my church, the man who gave me control of my words. They move into an office and I have been so caught up with her that I don’t notice the waters rising. The water is waist deep now and brown, ugly, tepid. It is warm water that keeps rising and I haven’t noticed it, and as I shout out the truth I am muted by the loud loud words of the people in my church, some blaming me and some warning me but all of the words are loud and insistent and more important than mine. There is an urgency now. I look for Medusa, she has been at my side this whole time, I had felt her, but amidst the yelling I hear her, standing in the rafters and pointing down at me, saying my name like a curse word, “e! E! eeE!” Someone pushes me, telling me in a sleepy voice that it is 7:40 and I will be late for work, I am almost late. I wake up and try to wade through the water that isn’t there anymore, I try to push myself into the day, but the weight of sleep and of my dream pulls me down and under the covers and close to the warm bare back of my someone. I am wading through images and all I remember clearly is the honey colored planks of wood and the supposed safety of a church. I get up, slowly, and as quickly as I try to move, time is moving faster than me. There is a pile of clothes that I sort through, eyes adjusting in a dim morning, and I pull out pants and a shirt and I try to think analytically. Do these clothes match? Does it matter if my clothes match if I am late? I remember I parked farther away than I care to walk this morning. I brush my teeth in the bathroom, walking on my tiptoes through the quiet house; I go to someone’s bedside and kiss him before I leave and I try not to let the door slam. Suddenly I realize that I have to think of why I am late, if I am. Instead I listen mindlessly, half-aware, to DJs on a morning talk show. I am anxious to get to work, locked in a kind of race that doesn’t matter. Try to think of why I am late, I construct excuses, I plan the execution of my lie of the day. Traffic, not my fault, car troubles, something. Either I lie, or I say nothing, slipping into my place of work with a quiet prayer that I won’t lose my job, my silly job, because it’s all I have. And I do, I appear and it’s as if I’d been there all along.

Clothes

Use a particular and fairly vivid piece of clothing to tell a story. What does clothing say about us? How does it select us, as opposed to being selected by us? What do clothes hide? What do they reveal?
(from prompt #21 in The 3 AM Epiphany)


Read my response:

"Heavenly Blue" by tata aka T



I am blue and two pieces. My stitching shows, the thread is a contrasting shade of blue on blue. A tiny bird, mid-flight, is on my left side, just above the heart.

I am all about tits and ass; I am a collection of strings to tie the two, or three, together. The four if you want to be honest.

He bought me for $40 just before going to Mexico. He picked me out, ran his fingers along the back of the ass and checked the size. XS stands for extra small, he was told if he found that to get it, and so he did. I was his as much as I'd ever be. I don’t know how much thought went it all, into purchasing me, because it was all taken care of quickly and without a lot of talk. The important thing was that I fit, and I did.

That’s why I was kept, even after he left. I go well with lots of things. I look good with a white skirt on a hot summer day. As subdued as I am, a dark navy, I do not go unnoticed. I turn heads, I am small but hardy, I cover what’s to be covered without letting go. I do not get loosed no matter how strong the wave. But I am best and most effective in the sun.

Since that spring, four or five years ago, I’ve been to Mexico a few more times. I’ve been to San Francisco, I spent a little time in Colorado and Arizona. I’ve been taken off by different hands, quickly pushed about, slowly unknotted, mischievously pulled from behind. The same two hands always put me back, always tie me up with a bow.

The first time I was used, I didn’t get wet. I was put on, and he—the guy that bought me—smiled appreciatively, said I looked great, asked if I was okay. He was nervous: he’d never done that for a girl before. Lucky I worked out, otherwise there’d have been some trouble in Mexico, and not just at the beach. But he did a good job with me. When I did eventually get in the water, it was supremely satisfying; I’d had some time to adjust, being worn about town under clothes and by myself, sunbathing. So when I went all the way in, at the beach, I was already comfortable; I could enjoy body-surfing in the waves without concern for how I looked, without wondering if I’d fall off or come undone.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been in the water now, hot tubs and hotel pools and lakes and even river rafting. I’m surprised I’ve held up this long, but I guess that’s the test of quality: I’ve gotten better, more adaptable without losing any of my strength. I’m cut simply, but well. Like I said, I hold up well. Especially the tits.

As long as I’ve been around—relatively speaking, as my kind don’t last long, four or five years is an eternity—I know that I’ll be done soon. There’ve been good times, I’ve had fun, but soon I’ll be replaced with something more demure, a little thicker; bands and straps instead of strings. I go out less as it is, and I’m stretched out.

If I’ve been provocative yet tasteful, functional yet fun and all the rest, then I can retire proudly, with my stitches showing and with wings spread over the heart.

Colors

Write an exercise in which you repeatedly use two different primary colors. Describe these colors without naming them too often—and try to find effective synonyms for the colors without being too obvious about this disguise. Repetition of anything alien to the human elements of a story is bound to influence the way the story sinks into the reader's mind. How would red and yellow, appearing over and over again in drapes, carpets, clothes, handmade ashtrays, or toilet bowls, affect you as a reader? If you know anything about the meaning or symbolism of colors, choose your pair of hues well to play off emotions against each other. Apply this exercise to a situation with which you are already very frustrated.

(from prompt #20 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:

"icetea fantasy" by shikeroku





She took the yellow envelope off her windshield and tossed it in her glove compartment without opening it. Two more manila envelopes already sat in there. She mentally added and subtracted money from her life and then, biting her lip and tasting flakes of chapping Devilicious lipstick, she took out her cell phone and went to the bouncing, sunny calculator icon. The keys lit up a dim gold in the cab of her car and she jumped a bit at the light reflected in the rearview mirror. She added and subtracted and started delving into fantasy holding down the glowing yellow zero. After a minute, with the phone still flipped open, she put her head down on her steering wheel and stared at the black skids on her red heels. She tried to muster up energy but didn’t move her forehead, even putting her keys in the ignition and letting the radio play while she stared down at her scuffed up ruby slippers; there’s no place like home, even when home is the last place you want to be, she thought. Until she realized that she had tears in her eyes listening to “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” then she sat up, wiped her eyes, pushed herself out of her stupid mood, and started her car.

Suddenly motivated to get going, she put the car into reverse and backed out without looking behind her, where a little VW Beetle, bright as an egg yolk, was double-parked with blinking piss-colored warning lights. She slammed on her brakes and the brake light glared angry red at the Beetle less than an inch away. She did not miss the irony of her predicament as she eased her car back into the spot and reached for her fire engine lighter and a cigarette. She got out of her car, slammed the door behind her, and leaned against the fender watching the warning lights blink on and off. The dim fire at the end of her cigarette inched closer to the filter; she flicked it, stamped it out, lit another.

Three Devilicious tinged butts lay around her feet when she reached for her phone to call a tow truck. Instead she half wrote a text message twice, then got back in her car and turned on the dome light, illuminating the interior with enough of an amber glow to reapply her Devilicious lipstick and to notice her bloodshot eyes peering back from the vanity mirror. She took out the three manila envelopes and thought about putting them on the blinking Beetle and maybe getting a beer. Adding it up in her head, she accepted that she could not afford a beer, but rationalized this thought against the fact that she was stuck and might as well knock herself out while down, so she got out of the car again, clutching her saffron purse. Hell, why not just get a Bloody Mary, she thought. She could just taste it, thick spicy tomato juice, when the blonde came running towards her, keys in hand, calling out apologies. She waved it off and got back in her car for what felt like the hundredth time, started her engine, and realized, thanks to a pulsing red icon, that she was out of gas.

Canned Film

Write a very short synopsis of an imaginary film, as if writing for one of those video analogies—perhaps 10,000 Films in a Nutshell. Concentrate on images as much as you can in this summary of a plot or an interesting combination of images and time.
(from prompt #19 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:

"the headless lovers" by Cane Ludico Rosso



The film opens in black and white, with stock footage of the two main characters in their daily life, just before they meet. The woman, played by the ubiquitous leading lady of period pieces, Keira Knightley, is shown wearing pristine white gloves and dining with company at a banquet table, attended to by servants, which is neatly juxtaposed by the man (played by underrated Ben McKenzie), with dirty fingernails, jumping out of view of two slovenly matrons to eat an apple in a busted door frame.

When the two meet up at a greasy café, the woman looks to the man, who ignores her and in fact walks out of the diner. After a beat, the woman gets up and follows the man to a closet-like room in a tenement building with laundry hanging out the windows. In the next scene, we see the two damp with sweat and half-clothed, and the woman is begging the man to tell her a story. As he talks about aliens living in a highly developed industrial society on an arid planet, haunted by ruby-lipped Zombie women and hunted by a nomad army, the camera pans out to the night sky and zooms into a full color, animated planet. McKenzie and Knightley’s voices interrupt each other, changing details in the animated cast. When she is offended by something, the animation pauses while an appropriate substitution is created collaboratively with McKenzie.

As the lovers continue to meet amid poverty and squalor, adding to the story the viewer sees literally animated, the man struggles to avoid imprisonment for arson, which the woman’s father framed the man for in order to collect insurance on his least profitable factory. Tension simultaneously builds between the nomad army and the insulated alien society, but before the woman is ready to leave her life of privilege for her lover, WWII claims the man, which we see amid the devastation in the science fiction story. Years pass, and the animated world begins to fade away, until finally, the animated priestess voiced by Knightley defies the Father figure, and begins to rebuild.

TV

Write a short interior scene during which a TV is on. Let the words and images on the screen interact interestingly with the activity going on in the room. Your characters can be watching TV, or it can be background noise. Choose your TV show carefully to reflect an interesting aspect of the human situation you're also describing. TV is omnipresent in most of our lives. Write about how people talk around it, over it, or with the judicious use of the mute button. This is a subversive exercise—an attempt to make writers come to terms with the hypnotic, all-powerful medium fiction must take into account.
(from prompt #18 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:

That Smashing Pumpkins' song, how does it go? Dead eyes, are you just like me? “By Starlight.” Cause her eyes were as vacant as the seas. I can't help thinking of it every time I see her.

"Doesn't she have dead eyes?" I say out loud.

"She does! You are so right!" Ashley says, laughing like I'm Jim Gaffigan and she's just inhaled nitrous oxide. I am not that funny.

"And Justin Bobby, Bobby Justin, whatever his..."

"Justin Bobby."

"Justin Bobby, then. What is his deal?”

“He is such a player! But Audrina keeps going back to him!”

“Well. Okay. Yes, he is an asshole, sure, but. He is not attractive, either. Like at all.”

“I know, right!”

“Does he have like, a golden penis? What is happening that more than one girl wants him so bad?”

“Like, I don’t know, that’s just how it is. Audrina loves him. But she tries to make him jealous, too, you know?”

Sometimes I feel out of the loop. Not in the way that I don’t know what’s going on. Just that I don’t react the right way, or the normal way. Also Ashley makes me feel old.

“What are you girls watching?” James comes back from the liquor store with a six pack of Hefeweizen, a six pack of Diet Coke, and some off brand of Vanilla Vodka.

Ashley springs up to hug James and to help unpack the groceries and make drinks and all of that. From the kitchen she yells out to me “Do you want a beer or a cocktail? I can make you what I’m drinking!”

I look over at James to roll my eyes, and he’s already looking at me with a smirk. I hate choosing sides. “Um. Yes. I’ll have what you are having.”

“Do you want a straw too? I have bendy straws!” She giggles, of course, after almost everything she says. James is having too much fun with this, he can see me tensing up, so I giggle too and sit up a little straighter.

“Yes! I love bendy straws!” I do, actually. Its just how often does that come up?

“So, what happened this week? Was a boy mean to some girls? Did Lauren cry?” James nudges Ashley. We settle back down on the couch, and Ashley and I balance the scene by sitting exactly the same, holding our diet and vodka cocktails with bendy straws (although hers is pink and mine is yellow) on either side of James, who messes up the balance immediately by leaning over and scooping Ashley closer to him. She rights her drink, which almost spilled, and adjusts, folding her body into his.

“Lauren didn’t cry. Audrina keeps saying how mean Justin Bobby is but she seems like she might actually get over him.” I say, surprising everyone.

“See, she likes it too. You’re the only one who doesn’t get it.” Ashley giggles adorably and looks over at me and holds up her glass; in unison, we say “Cheers!”

And all along, we knew we’d carry on, just to belong. It’s a really good song.

Synesthesia

Use synesthesia in a short scene—surreptitiously, without drawing too much attention to it—to convey to your reader an important understanding of some ineffable sensory experience. Use sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. According to M.H. Abrams in A Glossary of Literary Terms, synesthesia is a description of "one kind of sensation in terms of another; color is attributed to sounds, odor to colors, sound to odors, and so on."
(from prompt #17 in The 3 AM Epiphany)


Read my response:


The boys sat on the curb, leaning into each other without touching, splitting a cigarette like a reverse conch shell, in that whoever held the smoke also held his tongue. Cigarette in hand, head toward the ground, the taller one nodded along to the shorter one, who was speaking excitedly about a plot to sneak in. Add together the years the both of them had been alive and they were still barely legal, but on top of it, they looked guilty. Even if they were just sitting on a curb outside a club, “waiting for his mom to come pick us up,” they looked like they were up to something. And they were up to something, of course. No one believes two kids in skinny jeans, they don’t even believe each other half the time. That’s why they lie so much, no one would believe them anyway, might as well have fun while you’re as young as the night and as trouble prone. Inside the club, when the door opened to let someone in, they caught whiffs of what they were trying to get in to taste, dark syrupy music that wafted out smelling like cherry cough drops, overly sweet and yet just what they needed, just what they craved. Girls stood in line, peering in, catching the scent, shivering in clothes the likes of which the girls in school would have no idea what to do with. The boys stood up, finally, one throwing down the cigarette and the other rubbing it out with his shoe, black Chuck Taylors with potential band names written in ballpoint along the sides and on the white top of the toe. They took deep breaths, and if they knew no one would see they’d probably have held hands out of mutual, nervous support. Support for each other and for the general idea of the night. When they did get caught, and his mom had come to pick them up, the taller one cupped his hand anyway, as if waiting for someone to hold it. His mother couldn’t believe it—no one ever does—and so they found themselves retelling the story to the wrong kind of audience. And yet, though she wouldn’t admit it to anyone, scarcely even to herself, she was impressed, just like kids at school would be. How on earth does a twelve year old convince a club bouncer that they are the DJ’s roadies? How do they convince girls, or rather, adult women, old enough to drink, that they have highly contraband drugs? How did any of these things occur to a child, who just last year was posing with his little sister on the Easter Bunny’s lap at the mall, wearing a baby blue sweater vest and talking eagerly about hunting for eggs? Without any showy displays of vulnerability (the last person who can see you reaching for the hand of your best friend is your mother) the taller one tried, unsuccessfully, to sulk. He was buzzed, from the sips of cocktails he’d swiped and from the rush of doing something he’d set out to do. Inside had been just as exciting as plotting had been outside, the music just as sweet and dark and the air as dank. The shorter one sat in the backseat, relieved (for once) that his mother couldn’t be reached, but just as relieved someone’s mother had been. Without the cops involved, he could remember the night, untarnished, every time he sat smoking a cigarette, long after his best friend had left him.

Two Paintings

This is another version of Two Images Separated at Birth. Write a story that is an attempt to bridge two photographs or paintings...As in the previous exercise, use two distinct and unrelated paintings or photographs by two artists...that are very dissimilar. The key to this exercise is to study two images very carefully, taking notes on what you see, long before you've come up with any ideas about the story that might grow out of the two images.
(from prompt #16 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:









If he could be anything, he supposes he’d be just what he is; no King enjoys the solitude he does, no King has his view. So what if he does it forever, so what. So what if his life amounts to this, suspended in the sun, one arm holding the ladder keeping him steady, his other arm in motion, whitewashing above the city. His work keeps him lean, keeps him strong; it wears him down, sure, but life does that too and doesn’t pay for the privilege. If he could be anything, he used to say, he used to know, he’d be an actor. He had the looks, the ladies said, and even out at the bars the boys all called him pretty boy. And that’s how much he used to know, which is nothing, and even now. No need to know what’s being kept from you if you already know you got what you need, his mother used to tell him and his brothers. She said it when she left for the evening, when they were boys, and she meant it to mean, don’t follow me. She meant it to mean, ignorance is bliss. And if he ever has a son he’ll tell him the same. With a view of the city, he sees it crumble. He sees too much. Painting suits him better than acting, painting is constructive. In his youth, when he was young enough to believe in realities other than the one, he thought acting was about control. An actor—especially on screen, blown up like the truth—portrays a set world, a world that’s been written and rehearsed and constructed, with cuts and edits and better angles. But painting, the construction industry, that’s control he can measure, control he can use. He coulda been a lot of things…how’s the song go? He coulda been a book the way people study his looks. It’s better to be the one who studies how things look, he decides from where he stands.

As for her, she could have been an actress too, the way she lies. He doesn't care what she tells her man. He called out to her, the way they all do, shouting at the woman, to feel like a man as much as anything else. She turned around, looked him straight in the eye, then turned back around and kept on walking. She does that, she conveys so much with her eyes, it’s what makes her lies so convincing. She shudders thinking what she might be capable of, seeing Joan Crawford in the theater. Nobody told her this was a horror movie. Nobody told her that a guilty conscience, like a psychotic mother, can attack at any time, you're never ready. The theater is cold enough that her shudders are not out of place. Her man is next to her and attentive, he leans to put a steadying arm around her, and it’s too much. She murmurs dear, and just a moment; with the dark and the silence, her dishonesty is blatant, but she doesn’t want to address it. She stumbles, apologizes, brushes kneecaps with her thighs, bows her head and blinks back tears until finally she is out of the aisle. Once in the hallway, in the light, she leans on the wall and is relieved to find it doesn’t lean away. She thinks if she ran off with her other man, her painter, how long until she died out of self-disgust. Now in the hallway, away from the crowd, her blue blouse feels comforting, long sleeves that warm her arms. She should go back in and sit next to the kind attentive man, or head outside, find her painter, but she does neither. She stays right where she is, relieved to be the only one in her company.

Two Images Separated at Birth

Think up a vivid, haunting image (a picture in one frame that tells a great deal of story). Work hard to construct this image so that it is not only visible to the reader but exciting and thought-provoking. Then think up another unrelated but equally vivid image. Work at composing two unrelated images, two scenes or situations you do not think are part of any story. Then write a 600 word story fragment out of the two images.
(from prompt #15 in The 3 AM Epiphany)


Read my response:

Crowd is to Disneyland as rain is to Seattle. Everything takes so very long, and it is unsettling to realize what humans are willing to put up with in the name of having a good time. In addition to crowds in line for Thunder Mountain, crowds in line at the churro cart, and crowds in line in the Frontier Store Souvenir shop, there is a crowd gathered around the face painting booth. There is a murmur that there is a Make-A-Wish Foundation little girl, and like a car accident, everyone wants to see how bad it is. A little girl, about three, sits on a barstool with her feet tucked under her for added height. The span of her legs from knee to toe is still less than the diameter of the round wooden seat. She is completely bald, and it’s the lack of eyebrows that confirms the rumor. She looks like the poster child for a sympathy driven fundraiser, and also a little alien, with eyes that take up her whole face. The white face paint makes her eyes stand out more, and then there are red polka dots on her cheeks, exaggerated red lips, orange triangle eyebrows, and finally, a little black polka dot on her nose. The crowd oohs and awws at the patience the little girl demonstrates, like she is sitting for a portrait painting by Michelangelo. She doesn’t blink at the gathering crowd, or turn her head to acknowledge them, or smile at the pictures being taken. The face painter respects the little girl’s concentration, and mimics it by likewise ignoring the crowd. The two, painter and painted, make up their own little ring in the center of the circus around them, and despite the number of people in the Happiest Place on Earth, there is a somber hush.

Behind the little girl, her parents blend in with the crowd of concerned adults holding cameras and camcorders. The father long ago took it upon himself to be chief photographer, and while now his daughter is his most remarkable subject, she wasn’t always and won’t always be. He bought the camera, his favorite camera, when he was a kid, eighteen or maybe nineteen, from a pawn shop in Seattle. He went there as a tourist, which is to say, to see a girl. He hadn’t ever been to a pawn shop, or to the west coast, and as boy growing up in the Midwest both had seemed as unlikely a place to go as the moon. But there he was, buying a camera in a pawn shop in Seattle, with an old man behind the counter and a dark sky dimming the shop’s interior. There was no else in the shop, just a skinny white kid running his fingers over lenses, leather cases, flash attachments, tripods, all more involved than anything he’d had in mind. He had a pack of cigarettes in his back pocket and he reached for them, lit one, then thought to offer one to the old man behind the counter. The old man sat fat and cruel in his chair, his thighs hanging off the thin plastic edges of a low seated chair with insufficient back support. The back panel of the chair was like a little black stamp on a wide, overstuffed envelope. He grunted and adjusted his whole body to uncross his arms, and he accepted the cigarette, and the light, with a nod. The skinny man stood leaning against the pawnshop counter, all limbs, smoking a cigarette and considering the investment he was making by buying a photographer’s camera, while behind him, behind the counter, the fat man sat and cynically considered the likelihood of his customer using the camera for anything more than pictures of pretty girls.

No Ideas, But in Things

Write a very brief story (300 words) told only in images--concrete, simple, visually efficient movements and details. This exercise does not ask you to eliminate people from your prose, just to watch what they do and what objects they crave and caress rather than what they say or think about these objects and actions.
(from prompt #14 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:


Boxes of detergents line a shelf hung above a row of washing machines. Two boxes of Tide, Sunny Meadow scent and Fresh Spring Rain, take up the most space. A bottle of All Small & Mighty rests on top of one washing machine. Five quarters go into this washing machine's slot. Inside the machine are two wifebeaters, thirteen elastic-banded socks, a flat sheet, two pillow cases, three boxers, a crewneck undershirt, a t-shirt from The Killers' Hot Fuss tour, a thong, and a lace cami with a built-in bra.

Four chairs flank the windows to the left of the door. In the second seat from the door, there is book of Sudoku puzzles, a pen, and a woven coin purse with orange, red, yellow, and green stripes and $4.75 in quarters. In the third seat from the left there is a boy sitting with his elbows on his knees, rotating a cell phone held by his right hand's thumb and forefinger. His left foot taps unevenly, between six and eight taps every ten seconds.

The machine with the All Small & Mighty buzzes. The boy grabs a metal cart and takes everything inside the washing machine, puts it in the metal cart, and wheels the cart from the washing machine to the row of dryers. The boy pulls his cell phone out of his pocket, looks at it, notes the time, puts it back in his pocket. He puts all of the clothes in the metal cart into the dryer, plus one sheet of Downey Soothing Lavender fabric softener. Six quarters go into the coin slot for this dryer.

The boy sits down on the third chair from the left and picks up the book of Sudoku puzzles and the pen. He puts down the book and takes his cell phone out of his pocket and flips it open, goes to the Dialed Calls screen, then flips it closed. He opens the phone, goes to the Received Calls screen, then closes his phone.

The buzzer rings for the dryer. The boy grabs the All Small & Mighty Detergent, the Downey Soothing Lavender fabric softener, the coin purse, and his laundry hamper that holds two wifebeaters, thirteen elastic-banded socks, a flat sheet, two pillow cases, three boxers, a crewneck undershirt, and a t-shirt from The Killers' Hot Fuss tour. The book of Sudoku puzzles and the pen remain in the laundromat with the boxes of Tide and other leftover objects.

The Ironist

In 500 words, create an observer of events outside her own direct experience, someone who knows more than she lets on, jokes with us (the readers) but who also indirectly reveals a complex reading of the events she is describing. M. H. Abrams, in A Glossary of Literary Terms, says "...in Greek comedy the character called the eiron was a dissembler, who characteristically spoke in understatement and deliberately pretended to be less intelligent than he was." The dissembler or ironist or trickster is a wiseass, a clown perhaps, a teller of tall tales.
(from prompt #10 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:

Lucy wears thick lip gloss and designer heels. Ted wears a smirk and Italian loafers. Lucy twirls a pretty curl and stares at her reflection, and Ted rests his hand in his pocket and watches Lucy. Her mother designs clothes, and the daughter, dressed in wealth and raised accordingly, to be seen as desirable, grew up spoiled. His father purchases and develops buildings, and the son, raised in wealth and dressed accordingly, in anything seen as desirable, grew up spoiled. Spoiled means ruined, and it happens to children like it happens to food: when left out too long, unattended. What happens is that no one wants something spoiled, and they are thrown out as rubbish. The difference between children and food, of course, is that children have thoughts and feelings. Both food and children can be equally unaware of their own spoiled state. And everyone everywhere grows up thinking the way they are is the way everyone is, until suddenly something changes, and it becomes clear that no one is normal.

Lucy looks like a prize, and she even comes with a ribbon. She has wide eyes to look for approval and they are framed by demurely flattering eyelashes; as they say, art isn’t art without the right frame to hang it. She is either very beautiful or very ordinary and it depends entirely on who she is standing near, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so her beauty is in the eye of whoever beholds her. Ted yearns to hold her. He looks for prizes, he understands that a prize is whatever you find and assign a value. Like empty lots and vacant buildings, Ted sees beauty in nothingness, in the lack of the concrete.

The relationship between the two begins in hatred, like so many love stories, and it is only when they realize the other has what they do not that they see how much they have in common. They are a pair of bulls-eyes, they are the center of what everyone tries to hit; the children of power and wealth, the products of vanity and acquisition, no one can see what good could come of them. It is odd to think that such famous parents have such infamous offspring. For those who have watched them grow up it is hard to imagine much more wasted breath than this pair of idiots, and everyone has watched them grow up, we see them on television and we read about them online. You can’t help but feel bad for two little lovers, two spoiled children, who have so many people watching them and judging them, cynically, from a safe distance. What a lovely couple they make, at any rate, as she stares at her boyfriend, staring at her, in the reflection of the mirror in her mother’s Victorian vanity.