So at the beginning of writing class we sometimes do a freewrite, where you get a prompt and you have to just go with it for 20 minutes. For this freewrite I had to start with the sentence ,"Why don't you learn to talk to a rooster?" Hope you like! And post any thoughts you have below where it says comment. I want feedback!
“Why don’t you learn to talk to a rooster?” she asked in her lazy Southern drawl. She was perched on one of the many large hay bales that were piled inside the barn. Her hair swung around her shoulders in two long braids, blending against the color of the hay, and her worn overalls hung loosely on her, rolled up at the ankles.
Johnny sat across from her, eyes downcast as he fiddled with a piece of straw. He lifted them when he said, “Sally, there’s no way to talk to roosters. They’re not humans.”
“I can talk to them,” Sally retorted. “They tell me stuff. Like how much they like biscuits. The ones my Ma makes.”
He liked to think she was simply a free spirit. That she just thought differently from everyone else. But moments like this made him wonder if maybe it wasn’t a barn she should be in. If maybe it was an asylum.
“Sally, come on. Don’t be ridiculous.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she stood up unsteadily on the bale. “You don’t believe me. No one believes me. They think I’m crazy.” Sally’s chin was trembling, her teeth chattering against eachother. Her whole body began shaking, her fingers clenched into tight white fists. Her mouth opened into a dark angry rectangle, and her lips pulled back as if to scream. Johnny tensed, bracing himself for the onslaught of noise. But it never came. He looked over to see her crumple, and in that moment he couldn’t help but see her as one of those small, delicate birds you capture, only to see it die a moment later, victim of it’s own tiny heart racing out of it’s control.
Sally lay atop the hay, motionless, one of her arms bent beneath her. Johnny threw himself across the hay bail separating them, his breath held unknowingly captive in his chest. Only as he approached did he see Sally’s back moving as she breathed, and he exhaled, kneeling down beside her.
“Sally, what happened? What’s wrong?”, Johnny asked hurriedly. Sally stared straight ahead, her clear, creek-colored eyes glazed over the shade of an overcast sea. “I am, aren’t I?” she asked in a near whisper, turning her head in a creaking way, a way painful to watch. Like a possessed doll in a horror film.
“You are what, Sally? What do you mean?” Johnny’s eyes were creased with worry and incomprehension.
“Insane.”, said Sally, slowly, as if tasting the word for the first time. “Insane,” she said again, this time with a slight curling up of her lips.
Johnny froze. His mind went blank. How could he say that yes, yes, you are insane Sally. How could he possibly tell her, Sally, you scare me. So he chose denial. “Sally, stop. You know your not insane.”
“I am to you. Not to myself I’m not. But to you, to the rest of the world, I am considered a lunatic. And if the whole world sees you as something, you are that thing, aren’t you?” She said this as an accusation, not a question.
Johnny grabbed for words, but they wouldn’t come. “I-I..” He stuttered.
“You just don’t understand me, Johnny. Nobody understands me.” She cocked her head, her smile growing wider. “But I pity you, Johnny. I really, truly do. If only you could see what it’s like on my side. The world’s a much more interesting place, you know that? People like you, who have no imagination, you just see the world as it is. Cold hard facts. That’s no fun, now is it? I see what I want to see. For example,” she hopped up suddenly, and twirled around, perilously close to the edge. “You would say we’re on a bale of hay right now, wouldn’t you?” She looked at Johnny expectantly. When he did not respond, she repeated more loudly, and with a creeping tone of malice, “Wouldn’t you?” At this Johnny responded with a quick nod of his head, all he could manage in his current state of shock.
Sally smiled again. “But you see,” she said, with an air of explaining a very simple concept to an ignorant little child, “This isn’t a hay bale at all.” She accentuated this fact by wagging her finger and shaking her head. “This is actually a palace, and we’re standing on the rooftop. It’s a rooster palace, by the way. And all day and all night we feast on biscuits. Doesn’t that sound fun, Johnny?”
At the sound of his own name he finally broke out of his shocked stillness, and before thinking, he blurted out, “ Sally, stop, you’re scaring me.”
Sally froze mid-twirl. She pivoted to face Johnny, her eyes incredulous. “ I’m scaring you? Johnny, you’re the one scaring me. Do you realize how horrifying it is that you can’t see what’s in front of your own eyes! Johnny, do you even know that I’m a rooster?”
Johnny’s eyes widened, and he started to slowly back away from the crazy girl across the hay bale from him.
Sally scoffed, a hard sound of disbelief. “You know what? If you think so bad that I’m making this up, Ill prove it. I’m a rooster, and roosters can fly.” Sally turned to face the point where the closely packed yellow hay stopped, and where there was only twenty feet of empty space between her elevation and the floor. Then the realization of what Sally was about to do was a freight train hitting Johnny from behind, knocking the breath from his lungs and propelling him forward. On the air that whooshed out of him was a cry of desperation, a plead of “SALLY! DON’T!”
But it was too late. His friend, or the body of her, raised her arms, and with a look of determination, flung herself from the edge. And Johnny watched amazed, as she seemed to linger in the air, a bird in flight. But it was only a passing second, only a projection of his hope. For a blink later, the spot where she just was was empty, and he heard a sickening thud on the floor below. He couldn’t look. He didn’t want to know. Instead he sunk to his knees, put his face in his hands, and wept.
