fiction
A while ago, a friend of a friend told me a story. She is a baby-sitter-slash-English-teacher for this young kid, and he always wants her to read him this story called "The Stone Rabbit," and she's not really sure why. I thought it was sort of an unlikely children's story, and for some reason that made me want to rewrite it
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The original story, as I heard it, was pretty brief:There's an ugly monster who lives in a cave. He's so ugly that all the plants around him die and the animals run away. So one day he carves a stone rabbit to be his friend. Its face is ugly because he's never actually seen the face of anything before. He loves the rabbit a lot, and always talks to it and stuff. Then one day he stops coming out of his cave. Years later the area is all pretty, and some people come and see this ugly rabbit and wonder what it's doing there.
I hesitated about the McDonald's thing, and you're right that it's out of place. I think I wrote it after listening to a David Sedaris monologue. If you imagine David Sedaris reading that line, it's a lot funnier.
I curious about your reaction to the end. I think I may have underplayed what I was going for a little too much. I hoped the couple would come off as a little dirty, although they're still described in this lyrical fable-y way. Hence the condom in the wallet, and the girl being kind of prissy and the guy rushing to lay down his jacket so he can have sex. It's probably also not clear enough that when he goes to stand behind the tree he's peeing.
I imagine the sawdust-rope thing involves a lot of gnawing and saliva, for whatever that's worth.
I'll fiddle with how the monster died. I don't want to be too up-front about it.
And I'll put something more in the beginning. I'm not 100% sure about a full-blown description of the monster, because would that sort of negate the line you like about whether he's really a monster or just extremely ugly? Like if I give him dripping venomous claws or make him ten feet tall, he's clearly a monster; if I don't give him any special monstrous features, he's clearly just a very ugly guy. But there ought to be something.
And shit you're right about the sloppiness. My first drafts are always like that. Somehow I can't see it myself, either, until I've let it sit for a while. It's good to have feedback on a first draft, though. I feel like it saves a lot of time down the road. So thanks again. I'll post a rewrite of this later.
You haven't posted anything in a long time, by the way. What's up with that?
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Why I haven't posted in a while: I've been really, really, really busy. Since January I've been working towards an MA, teaching in Baltimore City, and tutoring. It was insane. My MA classes don't start up again 'till June, though, so it's more easy-going now.
Hopefully I'll start posting stories again; I actually have a longer one I've just begun fiddling with, but it's only in the outlining stages. We'll see.
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