After coming across a conversation on Twitter between Alex Shvartsman, Ken Liu, and several other writers, I thought I’d give this one sentence story thing a try. Check out #1ss on Twitter to keep tabs on the fun. And be sure to check out all the other entries listed on Alex’s blog. Here’s my entry. It’s about 317 words:
Dear Kyle
I’m writing you a letter on an old note card because I know you’ll find it amongst all the papers on your desk where you sit and crunch numbers hour after hour (so studious you are, so dedicated) and you’ve left me no choice after you never called me that night after the mathematics conference where you said my eyes were like infinity and my smile, a million prime numbers lined up in a row (I waited for days and days for your call, staring at my cell phone, willing it to ring, but your name never came across the display), but you never called and I’m left scribbling this on a piece of yellowed filing card, the kind you use for quick calculations or jotting down fleeting ideas or like the kind you place in that tiny box you keep in the third drawer on the left under the ledgers and shoebox filled with pencils—the box where you stashed the ring fingers of your dead ex-wife and the three dead girlfriends you had at the same time as her (because one just wasn’t enough, it never is) and four note cards with their names and the dates you killed them, along with a scrap of parchment that says, “Bernice, 32″—because you’ve left me with no other options and knowing you have my name in a box with women’s severed fingers has piqued my interest—I hope you’ll forgive me breaking in while you sleep—so I beg of you, call me, text me, write me, or come to my place (you know where I live, don’t you?) and let me tell you how your eyes are like two plus two equals four and how your smile is like pi calculated out to a thousand places and let me show you the container I keep under my bed—I think we have something in common.
This was fun! I had no idea where it was going when I started it, but something began to take shape about halfway through. Did some fiddling around with the beginning and it’s done, just in time.
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Brrrrrr. I didn’t know where it was going either but you should have seen how I sat up straight when I got to the ring fingers!
Aw thanks 🙂
That was most excellent, madame. 🙂