Hidden Selves
Write a story about a character (or characters) who have exceptionally interesting or wonderful alter-egos or “hidden selves”. For the purposes of this writing prompt, a “hidden self” is an unconscious or repressed aspect of the personality, often poking its head out in dreams.
Optional prompt words: raw, papier-mâché, drunk, lunch, show, spaces, slippers. 150 words max.
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The same 50 words, three times.
Artist as Bird
Drunk with lunch, the artist schleps to the show at Spaces. In her paint-spattered slippers, up to her elbows in the raw papier-mâché she hopes will harden into her alter-ego, wings all appear along the length of her arms to let her fly above the viewers and the art critics.
Slippers schlep. All ego hardens. Hopes are raw spaces spattered with paint. Drunk. Her papier-mâché wings will appear to let the artist fly. She should. Fly along the length of the space up into and above the art show’s viewers, while the critics lunch with the art, arms on elbows.
At arm’s length, the art. The artist. To fly above the viewers, she hardens her wings of papier-mâché. To show raw hope, she should appear drunk and spattered with paint. To fly with her alter-ego into space, she elbows in at the show as she is, all schlep and slippers.
He moved to the mansion in April. By autumn he felt there was little happiness there. Not in the Gothic hall, nor the grand reception room. He could have recognised the mistake, cut his losses but he was drawn to the floor-length windows in the imposing rooms. And the gardens beyond. There, the old woman turned earth, tended flower and shrub, wheeled barrows, whistled melodies.
Her unhurried movement was followed by the gazing man. And looking on, he envied her. He envied the fingers that coaxed beauty and radiance. He envied the sweet-scented air she breathed. He envied how she swayed amid the graceful and the intricate: how she helped it to be, how she was of it.
He approached her, asked if he might be part of this. She, like the earth, was generous. Soon he was wishing to be always there, far from the screens and the ledgers.