Here it is, the first writing prompt of 2019. How did you do last year? Think you can go Full Bradbury and do 52 of these this year? Come on and give it a try. Here is where you start. Tell us about this man. Or statue. Or…something else?
You have 100 words, no more and no less. Tell your story in the comments or at your own web home with a link back to us, please. Welcome 2019 with a great story!
(Photo Credit: MeineMaennerwelt on Pixabay)
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Freak, monster, ugly. He had been called all those things and more. But the word that struck him hardest above all others: statue. He guessed all the others had something alive behind them. Frankenstein had been all of those. Except statue. Since birth his skin looked cold and hard. Plastic.
His job at the circus didn’t entail much. Stand perfectly still. Watch the people pass and occasionally move. “Did that statue move?” They’d whisper, eyeing him suspicously. He turned slow when he felt something warm grab his hand. “Mommy,” it was a little girl, “I didn’t know statues can cry.”
Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. Two heroes, displayed in marble effigy, you can find in town squares all across this country. In our town square however, the sole statue is of one James O’Connell.
Jimmy was quite a guy. He owned the used car dealership for twenty years. By the sixties, he owned the town.
Oh, there were whispers of a possible connection to the Irish mob but the town ran smoothly enough so nobody worried too much about that.
I remember in later life Jimmy fancied himself a latter day Hugh Hefner just by the way he dressed.
They say your whole life flashes before your eyes just before you die. But they don’t tell you what happens just before a witch’s curse turns your whole body to plastic for eternity. They don’t tell you about the abject terror of being able to see and feel but not move or speak. They don’t tell you about the regret you feel for not living fuller, loving harder, showing more kindness, being more grateful. As the last of his blood became molded in shape, Fred could only think of regrets. He’d have the rest of eternity to ponder them.
They say your whole life flashes before your eyes just before you die. But they don’t tell you what happens just before a witch’s curse turns your whole body to plastic for eternity. They don’t tell you about the abject terror of being able to see and feel but not move or speak. They don’t tell you about the regret you feel for not living fuller, loving harder, showing more kindness, being more grateful. As the last of his blood became molded in shape, Fred could only think of regrets. He’d have the rest of eternity to ponder them.
When the carnival left town for the last time, they forgot something. Or someone. Whether by design or not, the wax statue that had once greeted ticket buyers at the gate remained in the vacant lot the morning after the whole show had packed up and left town. With the lot available, my friends and I gathered for a Wiffle ball marathon first thing in the morning. Pete spotted him first. Was he a drunk? A creep? Eventually it dawned on us that “he” was an “it”. We ran through the possibilities! Melt him? Toss him in traffic? We eventually did both.