This assignment is all about crossing genres in writing.
Step 1: Pick a short story topic. (ie walking to the store, going to class, picking up milk)
Step 2: Pick two or three genres of writing style (ie romance, horror, fantasy, mystery, humor, etc.)
Step 3: Write your short story in the style of each of those genres.
Fumbling with hands overfilled with trash bags, she finally managed to get the door open and walked out into the impeccably kept front yard. Her front yard, she smiled. There was very little that brought her more joy than that front yard except for maybe her back yard. It looked like something taken from one of those ridiculously expensive home and garden magazines. In fact, on several occasions in the last few months she had been approached by those very magazines but had always turned them down. She didn’t need any prying eyes in her garden.
She walked with her trash bags down the river rock path past the red, yellow and white roses, past the lilac bushes and the small pond where the overly large goldfish lived, smiling in wonder at her good fortune as she went. She would never get used to this perfect little world belonging only to her. She reached the front curb, set down the trash and opened up her tiny vine-covered shed. Crap, she thought, not again. The trashcan was gone. The shed had been specifically built to hold, and hide, the trashcan was once again empty. She sighed wondering what they had done with it this time. Leaving her trash bags on the curb, she walked around the house towards the woods. It was probably back there again.
It had been almost six months ago when she took that fateful hike into the wood surrounding her house. It was like any other hike until after about a half hour, she sat down on a log to rest and saw it. Okay, not it but her. Lying on the far end of the log was a tiny little woman with wings. A pixie maybe? Or a fairy? She couldn’t be sure, it’s not like she had any experience with this sort of thing. At any rate, she watched the creature for some time, mostly trying to be sure she wasn’t hallucinating, and eventually noticed that she seemed hurt. She moved carefully over to the trembling creature and picked her up in her hands. The fairy pointed to the south, away from where civilization was. Understanding that the fairy was asking for her help, she started off in that direction. They hiked through the woods until they came across a low flat rock. Following the fairies instructions, she set the fairy down and headed for home, wondering if she imagined the entire thing.
Two days later, it started. It was so slow that it would likely have remained unnoticed for sometime if her trashcan hadn’t gone missing. In her futile search for the trashcan, she began to notice other changes. Someone had cleaned scum out of her pond, and where did that little bush come from? Her rarely used rusty garden tools were all clean and shiny. Weird. She started to keep watch over her garden and bought a new trashcan. Two days later, it too was gone but there were now rosebushes up the side of her house. What was going on? But then she saw them. Small, quiet and almost unnoticeable were the fairies cleaning her yard, rearranging her tools and coaxing beautiful plants from seeds. Slowly, her unkempt and ignored yard became a thing of beauty. Her only guess is that the fairies were grateful to her for returning their friend but she couldn’t ever be sure. They never came near her but she often saw them happily puttering around the garden, making everything beautiful. The only downside was the trashcan.
She had bought a little shed to put it in after the fourth one went missing. This didn’t stop them from disappearing but seemed to reduce the frequency of it. These fairies apparently did not like trashcans and would take any opportunity to get rid of it. Whether it was the smell, sight or simply the thought of trash that disgusted them, she would probably never know. Looking around her garden before she stepped into the woods to search for it, she decided it didn’t matter. She would deal with this annoyance in exchange for the most beautiful garden she had ever seen.
