The first paragraph comes from Tales of Love and Loss, by Knut Hamsun (noted in italics). Only the name of the town has been changed -- a town chosen by my students. After the opening paragraph, the students built the story, including twists, plot turns, tricks and resolution, on the spot, having two minutes to write two sentences. I have titled it:
A Crazy Girl, a Large Italian, and Sergeant Francis of Assisi
I’ve just met him for the fourth time. He follows me wherever I go, I can never feel safe from him, he appears right in front of me in the most out of the way places. Once I even met him in my room in [Assisi]; he had got in before me and was standing there. . .
I ask him to leave, to return to where he came from, but he firmly refuses. I have not felt direct threat from him but his deep glares are starting to freak me out and cause me to question what he wants from me. I do not know how he knows what my next move will be or where to find me but I am determined to find out.
As I ponder this, he pulls back the flap of his jacket and reveals a police badge. He firmly states his name as Sgt. Francis and begins to question me.
“Do you know who I am?”
I reply with a simple shrug trying to play off his games of deception.
Then I cautiously back up, surveying the scene and take into account the badge. He is probably hiding a revolver underneath that trench coat. I take off.
My eyes darted left and right, passing over the officer a few times as I bolted. The door wasn’t going to be any use because Moby Dick happened to be standing in front of it. I’m getting really sick of large Italian men. Especially nosy ones in law enforcement. That left the window as my only means of escape. I didn’t know why Sgt. Francis was here, but I wasn’t going to stick around and ask questions.
As I jump out the window, Sgt. Francis heads for the door. He is now chasing me down the street yelling “Stop!
I turn around just in time to see him pull from his jacket a handful of pictures. They were all of me. “But I love you!” He shouted.
I still don’t recognize the man, so I keep running, thinking his profession of love is just a ploy to get me to stop. The pictures he’s holding are not incriminating, but my hope is that he doesn’t know the story behind what I was doing in them.
I stop, wedged between two tall buildings, and no one to witness whatever will happen next. He tells me, “I was there. I know what you did.”
~
It was three in the afternoon when the nurse heard the girl, who had recently been admitted to the hospital, screaming. She knew she’d need another shot to sedate her. She felt sad as she injected her, she didn’t know why.
The injection didn’t work. The patient was even crazier than before. The nurse injected her, again and again. She seemed immune.
The nurse kept hearing the young woman murmur something. The noises become louder and more audible as minutes slowly passed by. “Photos.” What did this mean? “Daddy. Why?”
The nurse backs out of the room leaving the needles behind on the table. The girl lying in the bed struggles for breath. Then she jumps up with a start. “Where am I?” she sputters.
“A man brought you in here,” another nurse says. “He is waiting for you in the lobby.”
The girl lay back down. “I don’t want to see him,” she said flatly.
The nurse cocked an eyebrow. “He’s been very concerned about you.”
~
Standing between the two buildings this all came rushing back to me. He was not just Sgt. Francis--he was the man who had rescued me when I fell through a window years before. He had been by my side for everything at the hospital. But all the drugs with which they had experimented on me erased my memory for the most part.
Vivid memories of the incident and continued frequent drug use is what led me to leap out the window as he confronted me.
“You need help, Martha, and I’m going to give it to you”
Al fine.
.jpg)