Morgan McCashland
Experiment-3
1. “Once there was a man who happened to buy God's overcoat.” -A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets.
She was rummaging through her late grandmothers old attic when she picked up a picture she had never seen before. The crease on the edge hid a part of a man's face, by the way it continued to try to fold back over must have been stuck like that for at least a couple decades. You could tell by the feel of the box it was stained in muggy shades of brown from escaping sunlight for many dark years. She then lifted flaked, weak pictures one by one with cautious, intricate care. She began to wonder as each picture she pulled apart from another who was the man in each one. There was one where he appeared on top of a stark black horse, his face was covered by the shadow of a straw lined cowboy hat, but his smile was just brilliant. The picture must have been more than 60 years old but the way his personality shined through the black and white picture this man was frozen in time from a period she only read about. He seemed as though he was still present, in that youthful stage, alive through a photograph. She quickly grabbed the sunken box, snapped the thin leather strap back down and ran across the gloomy shadowed attic, down the rickety latter straight to her mother.
She still had the photograph of the man on the horse in her left hand and the ugly old box in the other, while facing her mom. She outreached her hand with the picture in it and said to her mom, “This is him isn't it?” “This has to be the man who grandma ran away with more than 60 years ago?”
Her moms voice shook while her eyes grew as she gazed upon what her daughter had just placed directly in front of her, “Where did you find that, Summer?”
2.
1. The box in the corner laid sunken into a deep dark place, almost hidden from view when it caught her eye.
2. She lifted the weightless box, studied the outside of the deteriorating, brown stained exterior and lifted the single thin leather strap and looked inside.
3. She had carried all the worthless junk her grandmother left behind when a picture lifted, and floated to the floor out of the ugly stained brown box as air rushed from out of nowhere in the attic.
4. She caught her breath looked around and talked to herself “why would my grandmother hide this stupid, molded old box” when all the sudden a picture caught her eye, she gasped.
5. “Mom, I can't find anything worth keeping up here” just as Summer turned a black and white picture seemed to have floated out of the box into her lap.
6. She couldn't believe it, the grandmother she thought she knew died with out revealing her darkest secret, Summer rummaged through a box that must have been hidden her whole life.
7. Her jaw suddenly fell, the box she was about to toss into the overflowed trashcan uncovered and the delicate black and white pictures fell like newly released cotton in June.
8. Summer was more than exhausted, she needed a break, just then an odd ray of light came through the attic and a picture purposely folded in a worthless box caught her eye.
9. She wasn't even sad, for Summer her summer was about to end and she sat in her dead grandmothers molded out attic when her finger caught a tip of a picture inside a lifeless box.
10. The folded picture was hidden in the motionless, airless attic when she realized she had found something that could change her life forever.
My favorite first sentence out of these 10 is #8, it is mysterious while kind of letting the reader understand the setting while being slightly descriptive.