Week Thirteen Discussion Board Two Short-short Story

Week Thirteen Discussion Board Two Short-short Story

       Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water. We hid the painted Easter eggs in the yard. Mine were pink and purple. I loved pink and wanted to make pink and blue lines on my eggs, the colours ran and turned purple.  My mother said they were lovely.  They were.  The purple was an intense shade and I was proud that my mother looked at my creation so approvingly.  My sister, Jess, was hiding her eggs too, where she thought I would not find them but I saw her out of the corner of my eye.  It wasn't difficult to figure out her hiding places, they were all obvious; plainly visible in the crook of the tree roots near the patio, inside a potted plant, on top of the bird feeder.   Jess was older than me, you'd never know it though.  She was a little taller but her face and expression told a different story: she looked surprised and confused.  She was confused. She wasn't like other kids, she was slow to understand and did the most obvious things and expected that we would find her antics amazing.  She had black curly hair and was sweet in her own bewildered way but she couldn't remember anything at school and even forgot what she was thinking when she raised her hand and the teacher finally called on her.  She would put her hand up again and tell the teacher, again, that she couldn't remember what she wanted to say.  Finally, the teacher would ask her to put her hand down and just be quiet.  It was embarrassing, I was glad we were not in the same class, it was hard enough that everyone knew we were sisters.  I was thinking of what other obvious places Jess would try to put her brown and green eggs.  She had tried to make green and red stripes on her dyed eggs the day before and her colours ran too; they turned brown and looked like something we should keep around for Thanksgiving.  I was thinking about her messy brown-green eggs when I saw a white Tretorn sneaker in the dirty water of a puddle at the bottom of the driveway.  It belonged to Jess.  She would only wear those white Tretorns and rebelled furiously when Mother tried to buy any other brand of tennis shoes for her.  My mother was calling us both and I had looked up toward the kitchen window where she stood and then out to the street where Jess was a moment before.  But Jess wasn't there, she didn't answer and the street was empty.  It was the last time I saw Jess.  I couldn't stop thinking that it was my fault that she was gone, that she left because my mother said my eggs were pretty, or because I was embarrassed when we walked home from school together and I tried to stay a few steps ahead of her and didn't answer her continuous stream of nonsensical questions as she hounded me with her words or maybe the dirty puddle of water had sucked her in. Either way, it was me or the dirty water that made Jess disappear into thin air.

The story in the text is about unhappy people, like the one I wrote.  The baby is innocent like the older sister in my story.  I think that the snow melting and dirty water described in the first line of the story set the tone for this kind of scene.  The stories are completely different but the tone is similarly sad and ends with no solution.

I chose this line because it reminded me of Easters in Minnesota and quickly brought to mind the memory of hiding Easter eggs in the yard with my son when he was little.  The rest of the story came about as a result of that memory.

Three elements of a short story:

media res: the story starts in the middle of an action, just like in the ten minute play, the story starts strong and at a moment of conflict

Rising action: the complication and escalation of the primary conflict, in this case the argument over who would keep the baby.

Resolution: The resolution is often brief but in a short story it may not even be present.  What is important is presenting the conflict and the emotion that we gain from hearing it described.  The resolution, as in 'Crossing the River Zbrucz', is not the point of the story, it is in describing the scene that the author conveys meaning.