1.
I grabbed him by the neck and wrung til I heard it snap. The body lay limp in my old weathered hands; its warmth still uncomfortable on my skin. Holding him by his neck, I took him out behind the barn. That's when the dirty work began. I prepared him well. I pulled at him til he was bald all over. Trimmed him up, made him look nice for the missus. It was her turn to get at him next. She'll get him cleaned up real nice and poke at him til he's just tender. Man, I can't wait for dinner.
3.
She watched him hobble up the beaten pathway toward the house. Smiling at his torn britches, she made mind to mend them later. The wife walked into her kitchen to prepare for her job. A large pot of boiling water, the biggest knife from the drawer, sterile white rages to mop up the blood...
Her husband sloshed in the back door holding it by its neck. Its head lay lopsided and flopped against her husband’s hand. You know I like it when you cut his head off before you bring it in, she said. The husband shrugged and stepped back out to finish it off. The wife pulled some spices out of the cabinet and her mouth began to water.
2.
The smell engulfs you--a pasture of cows, dirt, a chicken coop. The rocks under your feet crunch as you walk to the old coop. You see a gangly old man with a limp walking several paces ahead of you. He opens the screen door to the cop and the rusty hinges call hello to you. You follow him inside and his process begins. Who will Hans' next victim? You have no choice, no way to save any of them as you watch Hans choose the plumpest chicken and wring it with an emotionless stare. You flinch at the brutality, but there is no going back. Hans clean the chicken up a little behind the barn, and you watch him trudge up to his old house to deliver dinner to his wife.
-This is what I wrote in class. The number indicates what person I'm speaking in (first person, second person, ect.). So, I do know how to count... though it doesn't look like it by the way this is written but it is imperative that the paragraphs are lined up this way. Sorry ;-)
I know it's pretty creepy...maybe too creepy with not enough depth? Let me know.
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ReplyDeleteI'm writing about this entry mostly because I like it, and not so much because I have a bunch of advice or suggestions. I'll still do my best to suggest some stuff. So, while reading the first-person part, I thought that Hans was murdering a man (I forgot that we all did the story about Hans as a chicken plucker). I thought he was choking the man to death, and I was really freaked out at the "man, I can't wait for dinner" part. I though Hans and his wife were going to eat the guy he killed. I didn't get that it was a chicken until the third-person when the chicken was being referred to as an "it." I think the way the animal is referred to as "him" in the first-person part is cool, because if a longer short story were to be written about Hans, it could be written like the chicken is really a man. Hans could be doing all of these gruesome things to the chicken, but at the end, it can be revealed in a hint that it's only a chicken. It doesn't have to be a "Hans, the chicken plucker" story, it could be any subject; make it sound like something strange is happening, and later reveal that the strange thing was actually something really common. I think that would be a cool idea. Anyways, awesome job!
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