Alchera Project #38

Prose/Option No. One:  Project 38 - Other Submissions

Well, last month’s prose option was a total failure. I think I got a little too? something. Anyway, this month I’m going with the same basic approach: provide you with text from another writer’s work and ask that you use it as the opening to your story. Only this time, the text will be on a much smaller scale. Also keep in mind that since this is now the prose option, it means you can write fiction or nonfiction. I’ll get around to making a reference page for what each of the options means.

This month’s starter: I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me. (Hunter S. Thompson)

How to Get Out of School (2nd draft)
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity, but they’ve always worked for me.  When the boredom of suburbia becomes too much to bear, get high, get drunk, kick someone’s ass, and when you get busted and the principal calls your parents to pick you up from school, cry when they get there.

Tell them senior year has too much pressure–getting a decent score on the SATs, getting into a decent college, filling out all those forms.  So many forms!  You’re not even sure you want to go to college, but that’s what your friends are doing, what your parents expect you to do.  So, like, do you really have a choice?

You’re the oldest of four, you’re supposed to be a role model, but it’s just too much, man, it’s just too much.  Everyone wants something from you, but you don’t know what you want.  No one cares, anyway.

Raise your voice, thrash around the office, bang your head against the principal’s desk but let your parents keep you from really hurting yourself.  When you see the scared/appalled/confused looks on the grown-ups’ faces, throw yourself on the floor and bawl, bawl, bawl like it’s your fourth birthday all over again and all you got were clothes when what you really wanted were toys.

How unfair is life?  Unfair!  Not fucking fair!

Shove your hand in your pocket and fish out the bottle of Xanax you stole from your parents’ medicine cabinet, let them wrestle you for it.  Pop the cap off, scrabble around and pick up as many tablets as you can from your pharmaceutical pi?ata, stuff them in your mouth.

Swallow.

And the principal is calling 911, and your parents have forgotten why they came down in the first place, and now they just want to help, want you to know that everything will be OK, be all right.  Yeah, sure it will.

The ambulance shows up and you’re strapped to a stretcher, your friends staring at you as you’re whisked down the hallways.  You give them a wink, because you know you just bought yourself a long vacation from school.

It’s worked for me.