By Mary Lou Haberman (550 words)
Lucy felt restless. She needed inspiration to respond to the pig prompt and turned right. Afterall, even though the path was overgrown, it looked like it had been carefully carved through the woods years ago.
Surely the prompt shouldn’t be THAT hard to respond to. Think about it. The prompt is dumb. So, I’ll let myself think dumb stuff about a pig even if I have to make something up. Like pigs talk with each other gruntingly. Pigs sleep with their eyes open, so they don’t miss out on any food. Pigs are descendants of giraffes; pigs stick silly putty into their snouts and bury the eraser end of pencils there so they can write to their warthog cousins.
Yea, I can think of dumb stuff. Now, what was the prompt?
Despite the incessant rain and shadows, she let herself sink into her inner cave where she knew she would meet her muse – no problem, she thought. The prompt response doesn’t need to be long, in fact, it doesn’t even need to make sense. The prompt doesn’t make sense and so my response won’t make sense.
She felt a jolt of energy and nodded her head with enthusiasm. “Yes!” she yelled out loud, “That’s it. My response will match the prompt in content and tone. She hadn’t had that feeling of joy since before she got pregnant with Eleanor! Super! Lucy, writer extraordinaire is alive and well thanks to Wilbur and the oddballs who were back at the motel.
Feeling like a little girl with a new stuffie, Lucy skipped a few feet with delight until she slipped on the leafy path and landed flat on her butt. Startled as she was by the fall, she was frightened by what walked by her. A hedgehog? A Warthog? The fierce looking creature slowly turned its head her way and said, “I’m Wilbur’s cousin. Do you know where he lives?
Trembling, Lucy turned her head, looked behind, and nodded, “that way.” The hog slogged on while Lucy got onto her hands and knees, grabbed a low hanging branch, and pulled herself up muttering, “gotta lose some weight.”
She was dizzy and muddy and dazed. Unsure what she was doing out here in the rain on a Saturday night.
***
“EEEHAW, we did it!!” A loud deep voice pierced the woods.
Lucy’s head cleared when she heard the holler. She looked in the direction of the voice and squinted, unsure of what she was seeing.
Her writerly curiosity took over, and she carefully stepped over fallen logs to get a closer view. There was a small cabin rotting from decades of sunless wet. The door was open, and she saw a large man dancing around a small woman who was sitting cross legged on a kitchen table.
“ Yes’m! You are the queen of deception! Yo’ wig, yo’ voice, yo’ gait and that disgusting way you drool over Jimmy the Junkie! You even put food stains on your sweater to look like a genuine crazed old lady. Who in their right mind would even begin to think Jimmy’s books are worth reading?” Yup, Bunniekins, you pulled that off like a professional!”
Lucy was shocked. Was that Charles’s voice? And who was that woman? And what were they doing out here?
