by Karen Walker
The dried hunter sausage spoke to me. “Write a story!”
The longer I’m working from home, the more things are asking. My man Dave stares when I tell him they are, but I think it’s nice. They like my writing.
Still, I ignore most requests because not everything inspires me. Some of it’s just attention-seeking.
“Hey!” the carpet in the TV room said. “How about a torrid little tale about what happened on me last Saturday night?”
Ahem. I wouldn’t pen a kiss-and-tell.
Besides, the idea sounded like a trick. I’d have to steam-clean because I can’t tell what colour the carpet really is and readers would expect that kind of detail.
Then there’s the kitchen counter. It could use a wipe. The pushy thing—a loudmouth piece of granite—told me so one morning.
I shrugged. Don’t mind the coffee stains.
The slab pitched me a drama. “Picture this: a writer finds tough love and hard truths while cleaning the kitchen.”
“Interesting, interesting,” I replied, backing away.”I’ll be in touch.”
The dried hunter sausage had no such ulterior motive. Coiled up in the deli section beside a showy ham, it didn’t even ask me to buy it. Which was very considerate. Money is tight these days, and I can be impulsive at the grocery store.
I think about the sausage and the story it wants all the way home. Retreating to my little writing nook in the attic, I shut the door and set to work. On something.
A horror story? Makes sense. The sausage was wizened, almost mummified.
I begin typing. Tomb raiders violate an ancient Egyptian prince’s burial, ripping apart his mummy, flinging arms and legs as they search for jewels.
What happens next? Well, the prince’s intestines—perhaps not the most vengeful organ: I’m channelling the sausage—attack.
What would angry innards do to those daring to defile the tomb? Squeeze them like a snake? Overpower with a horrendous smell? That’d be fun. Eat the intruders and digest them? I shudder. Like it.
Eventually, I look up and see through a dormer window that it’s dark outside. I’ve been up here all day.
Downstairs, Dave has gone to bed. He’s not asleep though. He’s waiting for me. Eat your heart out, carpet in the TV room.
Awaken feeling exquisite. Then I read my story and, horrified, I scrap it and start again. I feel romance. A romance with dried hunter sausage.
Where? Oh, at a hunting lodge.
Now, I’m cooking.
Where’s the lodge? Rain falls on the little attic window and Scotland comes to mind.
I hike highland peaks and wander lonely lochs until I find her—the winsome raven-haired Elsa. She’s a magical cook, her sausages causing every master to fall hopelessly in love with her and enraging every mistress. A lowly job scrubbing dishes in the cold dark hall of Lachlan Macdonald is all the lass has left.
But then the fog descends. Stuck in the peat, I lose a wellie. I don’t know where I’m going, where my story is going.
Who is Lachlan? Okay, he’s a widower. Mourning his lost love. Better. He won’t eat and is wasting away. How tragic.
Wait, wait a minute. If he’s not eating, why does Lachlan need someone to do the dishes?
Crap! I slam my laptop shut and stomp down the stairs.
Dave is watching a John Wayne marathon, again. Same old dust, same old cows and cactus, the saloon girl with a heart of gold, the outlaw in black.
But then I notice more. The bad guy’s hair is as dirty as the carpet under my feet, his voice stony like the countertop in the kitchen. And crouching low over a campfire, the desperado is cooking a sausage on a stick.
Gasp. It’s all coming together.
I’ll write a Western!
Bio:
Karen Walker writes in a basement in Ontario. Her work is in or forthcoming in Brink, Flash Boulevard, voidspace zine, Overheard, Bullshit Lit, Centaur, and elsewhere.