We’re writing new original stories every week, and we’ll be posting them on Fridays. Here’s Megan’s response to this week’s prompts. Feel free to use the prompts to write your own story, and to share it in the comments if you like.
Megan here: I started writing this and I thought I’d try being serious for once. But then I couldn’t resist trying to tell a joke. Maybe I’ll be serious next week. Only time will tell.
Character: Photographer
Object: False Teeth/Dentures
Genre/Tone: Slice of Life
Tripp stepped away from the wobbly table in his studio. He was already sweating under the lights, but he enjoyed suffering for his art. His grandmother’s false teeth were posed in the midst of blossoms made of the newspapers and greeting cards she’d saved for decades: a still life commemoration of the woman who’d raised him.
He’d thought that the false teeth would be the center piece of this work, but it seemed grotesque now; he frowned. Sighing, he started snapping pictures, changing angles, lighting, the position of the paper flowers, and the false teeth.
Maybe he needed to go back to the drawing board. Finding a unique way to represent grandma had been his goal, but this wasn’t gelling. Her wide-mouthed laugh was his favorite image of her, so he’d chosen her teeth to represent that. But they didn’t evoke a smile without a face to sit in. He tried making a face out of the flowers and setting the teeth among them, but that just looked like something a toddler would do.
This was a challenge, he was an artist. He would rise to it, he had to do it for grandma. There was a knock at the studio door.
“Tripp, have you seen my teeth?” Grandma was awake and coming into the studio.
“What are you doing with my dentures?”
“It’s for an abstract portrait of you gramma.”
She looked at him. “Does abstract mean gross? Why don’t you just take my picture?”
“It would be too easy, gramma. Art should be hard.”
“Does it also have to be hard to look at? How about you find another object to represent me. Also, I want to eat breakfast. So I need to clean these off. Again.”
“I’m unappreciated in my time.” Said Tripp.
“It will be easier to appreciate art after I’ve had food and coffee dear. Come eat.”
She took her teeth with her, and Tripp turned off the lights. Tripp thought, with at least a little satisfaction, that there was more than one way to suffer for art.