In July, we asked readers to send in their best shot at an awful beginning. The intention of the exercise was to show that beginnings don’t have to be as scary as they seem, and that even bad ones have their worth. Wouldn’t you want to read about Liz’s precocious child, or a reality show in the woods? Though there’s one beginning in particular that we could do without!
Thanks Liz and Kris for joining our exercise! We’ll have more of these in future issues so there will always be an opportunity to play along!
From Liz:
The truth is, I don’t like ice cream. My mother would always sneakily sprinkle powdered antibiotics in violent purple ice cream so that I would get well. I didn’t mind the antibiotics because I was smart enough to understand that they were supposed to make me stop feeling cold from the fevered heat my body was generating. I just didn’t like how my mother would go behind my back – I mean, I was five and I knew everything there was to know about the world. Already I knew I would be better than my mother.
From Isa:
It is crumpled and lined and medium sized. It came from a store and then was left on the street. It floated for a while tlil it finally rested with the trash. No one knew Michael’s plastic bag was where he first hid the gun.
From Bea:
1
Rickett gasped as the cold metal plunged into his body. His muscles spasmed violently; his vision blurred a lot. The face of his enemies, in particular his greatest foe Dr. Kretchkvorkian, swam in and out of his vision like the koi in his girlfriend Ayumi’s pond. The Dr.’s wibbly-wobbly face taunted him behind the flash of his steel glasses. There his mocking face remained until the metal left his body, leaving him gasping. Broken. Defeated.
“Your rectal exam is complete, Mr. Johnson,” Dr. Kretchkvorkian said. “You’re free to change and proceed to billing.”
2
Once there was a girl who fell in love with a boy.
He wasn’t, like, the first boy she ever fell in love with. He was just the one this story was about.
He wasn’t even the most interesting. Or the smartest, or the kindest. He was nice, but he always felt like some kind of blur in her memory, like a pleasant intermission between two great acts, like Kenny G music that played on the elevator ride between the gilded lobby and the sprawling roofdeck with the city spread below.
Come to think of it, she wasn’t even sure she remembered enough to tell a story about him. Oh! One time he heated up some of his mom’s soup when she was sick, which honestly was very sweet of him.
Okay. Scratch that. Once there was a girl, who fell in love with a boy. A different one this time.
From Kris:
The animals gathered, entranced by the lull of Aurora’s golden voice. They listened in silence as the last of the song faded off in the forest.
Four animals sitting on top of a log shifted gazes awkwardly. Their backs were still facing Aurora, a fact that astonished many of the wildfolk.
“Why didn’t you turn around?” a bewildered bear asked.
They hemmed and hawed.
“She just didn’t have the voice!” the deer thundered, which made Aurora burst into tears, though she tried to smile bravely through them. After all, this audition to be the forest’s next fairy tale princess had been her biggest break yet.
Featured image by Sylvia Pelissero
