This is my entrance to the fast and furious task of the second day of the Theinkwell festival. The festival challenges writers to write a post based on a creative stimulus.
The proposal of this second day revolves around the stage; we are asked to write following four guidelines (we can respond to as many as we would like). I did two works.
Task 1:
Describe a room (eg kitchen, bedroom, living room) in a character's house in such a way that it tells us about a person's greatest hopes and fears.
My job:
We are in front of a two-story building. The entrance doors are so big that a herd of elephants can pass through without any difficulty. Above the doors there is a stained glass window in which a knight in ancient armor figures rescuing a naked lady tied to a tree, and whose long hair conveniently covers her chaste parts.
The back of the hall has window doors, and behind them, a large lawn square extends in front of a white garage, where different antique carriages are parked. Behind the garage there are trees trimmed as carefully as the fur of woolly dogs, and after them a huge shed with a dome-shaped roof. Then there are more trees and completely in the background, you can see the solid, uneven and peaceful lines of the hillsides.
On the east side of the building, a staircase paved with tiles leads to a balcony with a wrought iron railing and a stained glass window with another romantic scene. Huge chairs, with round red plush seats, attached to the wall, in the empty spaces, give the feeling that no one has ever sat on them. In the middle of the west wall there is a huge fireplace with a copper screen formed by four honeycombs joined by hinges, and on that one a marble shelf on whose corners there are cupids. On the mantelpiece there is a large oil portrait, and on top of it two cavalry pennants, eaten by the moth, crossed within a glass frame. The portrait is of an officer in military uniform of the 19th century.
Task 4:
Write notes for a story setting inspired by the image above.
Taken from The Ink Well Fast and Furious Festival - Day Two
My job:
He left the building without making a sound. He walked through the long corridor of the sleeping street like a ghost. He dragged his feet barefoot. He did not seem to understand things at all, he only knew that he was suffering. He looked for a wall to lie down on. Then it seemed to him that he could not remain there, immobile, and wait for the day to come. A violent desire to fly and escape gradually took over. He wanted to run and get help. Then the vision of something floating above the sea passed before his eyes, even though it was hundreds of miles away. He saw it as if he were in front of a movie. When he looked up, he discovered a chapel covered with exotic trees. The doors were closed; the air that entered his chest with difficulty stunned him and caused a sensation of pleasure and discomfort: a confused feeling of enervating voluptuousness and death.
He walked slowly trying to find someone, and while he did it, plants and things seemed to take monstrous aspects and appearances of grotesque and deformed beings. He fell on his knees and prayed vehemently, babbling words of love, desperate and passionate invocations. Then he calmed down. He raised his eyes and a door opened, dripping with the clarity of a white light bulb into the street. A man was coming to meet him.
It was night and he saw only the extent of darkness in the sky. He let out a terrifying cry and his head was left like a thread hanging from the cloth. Tears flowed from his eyes and his breathing slowed down.