A Collection of Prompted Short Stories

Lost At The Carnival
04/30/08

Amanda only looked away for a few seconds. A girl was being hung by a harness at her waist, and she was swinging around doing somersaults. When Amanda looked back to her parents, they weren't there. She just saw strangers, smiling with delight, as a flush of fear came over her. She traveled through the crowds, with her short, little body unable to look above the hundreds of heads to search for her parents. Immediately, tears began flowing out of Amanda's eyes. It was so hot and she felt so alone. Men and women looked at her with concern, asking her if she needed help. Then she remembered what she had learned last week in her first grade class: "Don't talk to strangers". So Amanda quickly replied, "No!" and then hurried away. She passed several EMTs, but she didn't recognize their uniforms. Amanda was only taught to ask policemen for help. She didn't know what to do.
After hours of crying, Amanda was exhausted. To avoid the sun, she found an empty box which once contained jugs of water. Amanda climbed into the box and pulled the cardboard flaps over her head. No one noticed; if someone did, he or she just thought that she was playing and her parents were nearby. She curled up and fell asleep. Amanda woke to the sound of something sliding across the top of the box. Then she heard the sound of duct tape being torn. Her voice was hoarse from crying, so all she could do was whimper and push on the box. The box was stronger than her, though. She felt herself being lifted up and placed somewhere more elevated. Then she heard a loud metal clang followed by the sound of an engine running. The carnival was moving to another town.

The Fallen Trees
04/30/08

         Every tree has a story and every flower has a name. Sounds like I stole that idea from Pocahontas, right? Well, yes, but that doesn't make it any less true. Why do you think so many Shakespeare plays and fairy tales take place in the woods? Because in the woods, stories come to life. In our own lives, we take nature for granted. We cut down countless numbers of trees so that we can live in houses with artificial things inside them. We barricade ourselves within locked, uninviting doors. Children no longer go outside to play in the sun or in the grass, but I can still remember the days when I played and explored in the woods behind my house. Now the woods have pretty much all been cleared to build more residential areas. Inside our homes, we breathe our conditioned air. We close our windows and blinds and turn on our fluorescent lights. The sun, the air, and the earth, apart from the dirt that we put in pots and the flowers that we put in vases, we contain ourselves from. So then how is it that we can say that we even really live on Earth?
         I used to hang from tree limbs by my ankles, exactly in the way that Forrest Gump taught Jenny how to in the film. I used to pick honey suckle off bushes; the more orange-yellow ones were the sweetest and filled with the most with nectar. I used to pick the berries, inedible, yet beautiful and squishy. I would mash them into paint and draw on the sidewalk. The rain would wash away the berry's flesh, yet leave some of the red coloring which looked like watercolor against the white path. I used to visit the fort that my Grandfather built me with a tiny door, a tiny chair, a tiny table, and tiny tea set. I don't know who started having tea in the middle of the woods, but who am I to argue with my Grandmother who bought the tiny furniture for me. Now, since the farther edges of the woods are gone, the tiny door, the tiny chair, the tiny table, and the tiny tea set are in my mother's basement. I refused to throw them out or donate them to other children, because that is all I have left from the woods. I also have a chunk of wood from the trunk of a tree that my father cut into one night. I remember walking with my father with a flashlight in my hand, and a saw in his, to the fallen trees which had been cut down during the day. This chunk of wood, shaped like a huge slice of lemon, sits in the middle of my table as its centerpiece.
         I still visit what is left of the woods. The number of acres has decreased to a quarter of its original. I can see fewer specious of animal in less quantities, which makes me wonder where they all went. They actually live in the world, but we take the world away from them. Imagine walking up to someone else's house and swinging a wrecking ball, demolishing it. And then imagine building a house right where the other person's house sat out of the debris. Then imagine moving in yourself. This isn't the game called The Sims. This is real life. The tree that was my favorite for climbing is gone and so are the thirty trees which once surrounded it. The wonderful smell of leaves and flowers is quieted by the smell of industry and runoff in the ponds. We are killing our Mother one forest at a time, one tree at a time, one leaf at time. Gray, black, and off-white will take over the world.