I recently realized I should be sharing the fruits of my little writing group experiments with Natalie and the gang. Here’s one from our last meeting. The theme was “a mundane object” and I thought of a team: the wire cutters, tuning peg winder, and hex key I use to change guitar strings. I think the time limit was 3 minutes or so.
The hex key, the wire cutter and the peg winder. They sit patiently for a few days at a time, until one of the herd needs roping. They make their way from one part of the house to the other, sometimes taking grand adventures into the depths of the couch. Plumbing the depths of the cushions, Peg Winder once met 2 quarters, a dime and three pennies. They introduced him to their friend, the grand Stereo Remote, who regaled them with tales of volume control. “Once I made the whole house shake because the speakers were feeding back on themselves!” he cried out in the warm darkness, with his attentive audience reclining amid the dog hair, crumbs, and whatnot. Eventually returned to the surface world to tune up the green guitar, Peg Winder tells his fantastical tales to Wire Cutter and Hex Key, who receive his stories with a mixture of disbelief and wonder. Hex Key knows not of the world of the cushions, but has many times been underneath the mammoth couch, running at night with the dust bunnies and cat hair tumbleweeds. Wire Cutter, the most valuable of the trio, has only seen the coffee table, the desk and the tool drawer.