Friday, September 26, 2014

Paragraph Fiction - Stolen First Lines

Rules: Find a random book, steal the first sentence, and make things up from there.



It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. His father had promised to return before the year was out, but the snows had already begun and nothing stirred outside their small home except the last few leaves that trembled on the trees beside the blank road. The unknown was gnawing at him in the night so that he could not sleep, so Jonas put on his heavy coat and the scarf his grandma had sent and walked outside, where the snow was glowing with moonlight and he could almost hear the stars twinkle. He walked and erased the blank road, driving an uneven line across it until his feet reminded him that he had boots beneath his bed back home, but he had not discovered his father by then and so boots would have to wait until spring, when his father would give him bear hugs every day and remind him to be careful about getting lost in the mountains where he liked to escape.
The Giver, Lois Lowry

This is me when I was 10 years old. I was old and wrinkly. At least, that's what I thought, or else I thought I would skip my prime altogether and enter old age in a month or so. They are one and the same, really; ten was ancient compared to the youthful three or four, at which age you were just beginning your education and discovering how to tie your shoes. But I was beyond learning to make a bow from shoelaces and teaching my hand to shape the letter B. When I looked in the mirror, I saw the wrinkles already growing, crows feet at the edges of my eyes when I smiled just so, my teeth falling out and implying a serious need for dentures, a hair I could have sworn was gray even though Mom assured me it was a light blonde. And so I wrote my will, and bequeathed my Barbie set to my future nieces, who I was sure would come along relatively soon, because my younger brother was seven, after all, and seven isn't so much younger than ten. That done, I visited the cemetery to find a gravestone I thought would suit me, finally selecting one that had a rose and the name Pearl Quinn on it. I took a picture of it and placed it on the refrigerator along with my will so no one would forget.
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died. If you were blind and could have heard him talking, you would have assumed his deathbed to be surrounded by a family of ducks and twenty-one hamsters, all in deep mourning and doing their best to amuse the poor fellow. When he did finally die, it was while smiling at the antics of a particular hamster that had attempted to ride one of the ducks as it ran, quacking, around the perimeter of the room and out into the hall. The hamster fell off somewhere near the bookcase, where it sighed and brushed itself off, then held out a thumb (which it had been miraculously born with) for a lift back to the right rear bedpost, where his brother had taken up temporary residence for lack of room beneath the bed proper.
Tinkers, Paul Harding

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