What does coming up with short stories actually accomplish? They usually don’t get published or have any strong relevance when it comes to literature. Wait, that’s not true! Many times short stories give a sample to a novel or even a screenplay. Short stories are an impressive accomplishment when it comes to writing. It packs many tools and structure into a small story.
Check out this short story by Wayne Legar Domane [W.L. Domane] titled: Marigold and Orange
Marigold and Orange
She ripped at the skin, clawing it apart to reveal the now oozing flesh underneath. Tossing the skin aside, she gorged herself upon her find. Her mouth was quickly stained red. She felt a crunch and quickly spit out anything that was not flesh.
She examined the mess she had created and what she had decimated. She got up and walked over to get a paper towel. She wet it and wiped her mouth; the sink, improperly cut off went drip, drip, drip.
Her mess had now reached the edge of the table and spilt over like drip, drip, drip.
It sounds like it might start to sprinkle, she thought to herself.
She stood next to the sink and just thought about what she had done.
Nobody eats a green, she pondered. Sure broccoli, kale, and collard are all greens, but nobody eats a green or a blue or a red.
Yet why do people eat an orange? Was the fruit named before the color or the color after the fruit. An apple can be red or green or yellow, but an orange is blood. Blood orange. Because red orange is a color. And a color is something you see not feel. Unless it is orange than you can feel it and taste it and eat it.
Marigold wanted to try yellow. She thought and thought and thought for a yellow, but knew she could only see it, think it, speak it, but never know it.
Marigold skated around her apartment. No longer able to hear her own thoughts.
She squeaked, squawked, and screamed. The lamp got bumped in her rampage and fell through the floor. The couch was ripped in half. Marigold’s eyes glazed over as her voice reached a piercing note. With a mighty leap, Marigold spread her arms and flew around the room. Flap, flap, flap.
A mighty hurricane suddenly blew in and blinded anything trying to fly. It debated the room. It was a torrential downpour that severed the eyes and nose and the feels.
The hurricane caught aflame and roared “blazed, blazed, blazed.”
It quickly licked up everything that had been soaked, leaving a black.
A voice broke the now nearly silent room.
“Test 2-31b. Failure. Subject overexposed.”
The Observer looked into the new abyss. A noise caught his guard off. He looked around to see who it was.
The blackened room cried drip, drip, drip.
Does it capture you or at least keep you intrigued? The repetition was quite captive in my opinion. As well as the contrast of the color orange and the surrealist feel the story had. It seemed to dark in the beginning and ended that way.