ETHEL & CHERYL WRITE A STORY
“‘I found the tracks in the deep snow between the trees.’ Okay, that has to be the first line to start our story. Not over 750 words, okay Ethel?”
“Wait a minute! What are you talking about, Cheryl? The first line has to be ‘Pass the basil, would you?’. You were late and I’ve already started the story. It takes place on a TV cooking show. Here, take a look.”
“Pass the basil, would you?” “Basil! What are you a @#☠%^#✴︎& Idiot!!!” “I think it goes in spaghetti, Chef.” “But you are not making @#☠%^#✴︎& Spaghetti!!! I asked for @#☠%^#✴︎& Lo Mein!!!” “Sorry, Chef!!! All noodles look the same to me.”
“For crying out loud, Ethel, you misread the instructions! They are introducing the prompt painting with the ‘basil thing’. It has something to with the story in the painting.”
“What story? They aren’t cooking in the painting. I don’t see any basil anywhere, just a skinny-ass dog and some people having a meal. Okay, let’s figure out how they’re using basil, and I’ll save my cooking show story for later, I think it’s hilarious.”
“To each his own, Ethel, but it’s not about cooking. If we want to be writers we need to focus, especially since we’re going to win a prize, we want it to be good.”
“Okay, let’s think outside the box here. We can have ‘the tracks found deep in the snow between the trees’ be the dog’s. And, we can have the cook find them!”
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While surfing the web, Ethel came across a writing challenge called The Speakeasy #140, always on the hunt for something new, she enlisted Cheryl to help her. Here are the instructions she came across:
This week our sentence prompt, provided by last week’s winner, EA Wicklund, must be used as the FIRST line in your piece. And the media prompt is a painting.
Pass the basil, would you?
The painting this week is Isabella by John Everett Millais. It’s the first painting he did in the Pre-Raphaelite style and it was inspired by John Keat’s poem Isabella, or the Pot of Basil. Be sure to click on the image to see this painting in its large format because there is a lot going on in it.
- Submissions must be 750 words or fewer.
- Submissions must be fiction or poetry.
- Your piece must include the following sentence as the FIRST line: “I found the tracks in the deep snow between the trees.”
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Incidentally, to read some damn fine Sci-Fi, check out Wicklund’s Fairy Tales. 
Suzanne Purkis runs the speakeasy, and can be found at Apoplectic Apostrophes. 
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