TheEndNote’s first Fiction Friday: What it is, how it works, how can you participate, and finally, the fiction. And also how it happened.

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As promised, in addition to your biweekly essays, TheEndNote is full of surprises and experiments. The first one is here: Fiction Fridays.

What is it?

Every second Friday—that is on the weeks between essays—I will storm your inbox with:

• A short piece of fiction 
• A look at the creative challenge that sparked the story
• An invitation to take a crack at the challenge and/or an invitation to send in your own challenges for the next story!

Why fiction?

Because fiction is great. Also… it’s a good opportunity to explore creativity, storytelling, and how sometimes the world can be better explained through it. Why Fridays?

To alternate with essay weeks. So you don’t miss me so much. A short, nice (maybe even naughty) Friday read to end your week on a good note. 

Will the stories be related to the essays?

Sometimes. Not necessarily. Maybe some creative bias? But nothing is strict and the possibilities are endless. As my roommate Parker’s aunt Leslie would say: you can do whatever you want, it’s your pizza.

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So without further ado, here’s our first Fiction Friday: 

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How to steal a cloud

Eugenio de la Vega

The clock struck 5 pm and Noel Mentana rushed out of the radio station. His blind date wasn’t until 6:30, but at 33, every minute was a reminder that he was already late. One must hurry for a chance at love. 

And so, he found himself alone at the agreed-upon spot in the park, still with 45 minutes to kill. 

Ever so cautious, he used the time to go over his lines. If the conversation went toward the usual—what do you do and such—he’d have to find a way to make his weatherman career sound as interesting as possible. 

On the other hand, he tried to come up with questions that would make him seem fun and unique—If you were a season, which would you be? Which natural phenomena reminds you of your childhood? and which type of cloud do you identify the most with?

Suddenly, the clock hit 6:30 and a ray of light blinded the horizon. The park froze and time stopped to watch her walk. For a second, Earth left its orbit, Mercury reversed its rotation, and Saturn searched within its rings for one in her size. It would’ve been impossible, even for Noel, to predict such a storm. 

Amid the commotion, even I forgot my protagonist. 

“Hey,”  she said, with a voice made of silk.

“███,” he answered.

“Noel?” she asked, confused by his silence. 

“████████████,” he tried to reply, between nervous laughter. 

“Noel Mentana, right? Oli told me about you. Is it… you?” 

“███████████████████████████████████████,” he rushed to answer, falling into despair. 

“I’m sorry, I must have mistaken you for someone else,” she said, finally giving up. Noel’s figure remained frozen, inert as she walked away. 

“███████████████████████████”—nothing. 

Noel stayed still as her silhouette grew smaller in the distance, never losing its beauty. 

Finally, she disappeared. 

A lightning bolt and its thunder set the world back in motion and the universe resumed its course. Noel recovered his voice, immediately cursing at the heavens, jealous of an omniscient narrator who had taken his words to walk away with her.

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The challenge: 

How to steal a cloud is a piece I wrote in June last year for the  Malix Editores creative writing workshop, where my professor and friend Miguel Miranda gave the class different “triggers” to try and build our own story. The triggers could be anything, from images to songs to completely different stories, and we were free to write as we pleased. The triggers were just meant to be that—an excuse to get the imagination going. Still, one of my favorite exercises to try when I write. 

This one was triggered by the following image: 

My interpretation was: a peeking bird sees a date happening, gets jealous for whatever reason and unleashes his weather-control powers to ruin the poor guy’s day. And when you think about it, aren’t narrators also kind of like that? Especially the omniscient narrator—peeking in on everything, eavesdropping, and then using their powers to decide who gets away with what. So, in my story, the narrator (or I guess me) betrays the protagonist to steal his date. Can you blame him? To be fair he did kind of speak both of them into existence. Maybe he changed his mind and decided she was too pretty for him. Don’t they say “Only fools and dead men don’t change their minds”. Narrators should be allowed to do it too. 

How would you have solved this writing challenge?

Feel free to write your own version and tag Malix Editores and me, share it, or do whatever you want with it (but I would love to read you). 

Send it in before the next Fiction Friday (April 25).

And finally, 

Want to send in a challenge?

Comment your challenge here. I will try to solve as many as I can for the following Fiction Fridays.

Featured image: Fukurokuju Writing with His Head – Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1882)