These past couple weeks we had our English IV students make an attempt at a (very) short story basing the assignment on Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn’s anthology, Significant Objects, where cheap, well, crap, had stories attached to them and then sold at auction. The question to be answered was whether those made-out-of-whole-cloth stories would increase the item’s perceived value.
Spoiler: they did. Though when one of the authors is Colson Whitehead I’m not sure it’s such a surprise.
Our idea was to have our students bring in some random trinket and write a 100-200 word story around the object. We presented David Gaffney’s Stories in Your Pocket: How to Write Flash Fiction rules to our students and guided them through the process over the past week: starting in the middle, few characters, the importance of the last line, etc. – we’ll see how it goes when they finish them up tomorrow.
To model the assignment, I brought in my own object: a Blanton’s Bourbon topper. It had been lying around in my library (whiskey den) and thought it’d be more interesting than some superhero knick-knack I might have found in a drawer somewhere. Sure, I had to explain to my class a bit about allocated whiskeys and the collectible nature of these toppers, but as of yet I haven’t heard from any upset admins or parents so I think I’m in the clear.
Here’s what I came up with over the past week:
His return to the hotel had surprised her. There had been talk–idle gossip in the laundry room on the fifth floor–of his retirement. Of a wife, her cancer. Her death.
She caught a glimpse of him as he entered the hotel. The freight elevator doors were closing as he approached the front desk, his bags in hand. The woman who had just checked in turned to him then the elevator doors closed.
***
He left the next day. She entered his room–818–and began removing the linens from the bed that had not been slept in, being sure to mind the shattered glass, mentally noting that the cushions needed replacing.
Her foot found the bottle. The glass globe had rolled under the bed frame and the carpet was damp from spilled bourbon. Her eyes darted to the overturned side table and on the floor she saw the whiskey bottle’s topper.
She picked it up, the weight of the brass heavy in her hand. The horse was in full gallop, never resting.
“For a moment, he held this,” she thought, and placed it in a pocket of her starched apron.
“Baba Yaga, may you soon find rest.“
So, yeah, by the end of the story it’s clear (to those familiar) that I’m riffing on the first John Wick movie. When I was writing this for the class I had told my students about the Blanton’s bottle seen in the movie – many of them had seen the movie so that gave my modeling a bit of an advantage as far as keeping their interest up. The second day I talked with them about how I wanted to keep the Wick tie-in close to my vest to better the impact of the last line. I’d be curious to know if those who happen to read this blog who are familiar with the movie immediately knew where I was going with the wife dying of cancer reference in the first line, or if the last line had the reaction I hoped for.
The Lower Frequencies 