Much like my guest blogger, Aaron Smith a few weeks ago, I can’t decide and stick with a writing genre. I’ve written love stories, children’s stories, fantasy and horror fiction. This week when my writing club said write a 150 word story – in your genre – about insects, I stood there with my mouth open. I told my husband what the assignment was and he said “incest?” Men never listen. But, anyway, I was still in shock about the idea of my genre even though I was glad I didn’t have to write about incest.
So, I wrote four stories in the four genres that I usually write in, and they are about insects. I don’t know which one to use. Here they are:
FAMILY LIFE
She rubbed her antennae against his and chirped in surprise at how rough it was. Her’s were always smooth and soft. The rubbing became more urgent as the feelings increased; then afterwards they collapsed into each other’s front legs in the hole they had dug in the ground. The place the new larvae, yet to hatch, would sleep.
The new young were their responsibility, ones that they took seriously. The children would soon join them as they marched to the picnic grounds to feast. They would never be alone again. New lives, theirs to mold and teach; they would show them the best leaves to munch when the picnics were scarce, how to carry the crumbs from the tables, never to climb inside the sticky jelly jars no matter how wonderful they smelled, and always run from giant boots.
Ah the joys of family life.
SUMMERTIME BUGS
The little girl watched the red bug with black spots as it crawled across her finger. The tiny feet tickled as they moved along her hand and up her arm. She giggled. Muffin raced around the back yard chasing his ball. He would bark at it because it was trying to get away and then nose it when it didn’t move. Soon bored with his games, he trotted to the shade of the big tree to lie down at Sally’s feet. She stared at the thing on her arm.
Laying his head on the corner of her dress he looked up at her as she laughed. The ladybug crawled up her neck and was approaching her face when it flew and landed on Muffin’s nose. He looked at it with crossed eyes as it walked across his fuzzy nose. He sneezed and it flew into the warm afternoon.
FAIRY GAMES
On tiny fairy wings she flew across the lawn and spied the gray multi-legged creature under the leaf. She was looking for the object of their sport. Reaching down she touched it with her hand and it instinctively rolled into a ball. Just what she needed. She scooped it up into her hands and flew away with her prize to the field where the other fairies waited and tossed it into the center of the group. A whistle blew and the games began – kicking and rolling the ball toward the goal post at the other end of the field. Each side had a chance to make the goal if the other did not block the shot.
The games continued into the evening when the fireflies came out and then the fairies yawned and flew home. The grey creature unrolled itself and began to crawl back where it came from.
THE LABORATORY
The grasshopper hopped in the door behind the man in the lab coat and then to the other side of the room. It was cool here in the brilliantly lit room with bubbling beakers and whining machines of every type. Electricity pulsed between rods as the scientist flipped the switch. And that was the last thing the grasshopper knew until he felt the pressure of the roof against his back. He grew until the building around him cracked and fell away and he was once again outside in the heat of the day. He knew only one thing he was hungry. And he leaned down, picked up the screaming man in the lab coat and bit him in half. Blood dripped from his insectile maw as he crunched the bones and swallowed the cloth coat with whatever was inside it. Afterwards he hopped away looking for another meal.
Insects will never be the same. Which one do you think I should use?
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