Pooty Madness

This story, which actually begins with a short poem, was written for 5 Word Challenge, a weekly writing exercise on Vox. This week�s 5 words are rabbit, craving, wicked, fortunate and amplifier. Enjoy !

Hungry

Hungry

He realized he was hungry

Wicked craving for rabbit

Soft, fluffy, delectable white rabbit

T-shirts

Drove the madness that propelled him through the aisles of Wal-Mart

America’s favorite discount store

 

 

He’d just toppled the stacks of t-shirts in the seasonal aisle at the Walgreens down the block. A regular pillage as he’d at first gently ruffled the carefully folded garments, all precisely placed by Polly, the white-haired, soft-skinned great grandmother who truly believed any job worth doing was a job worth doing right, but that gentle prodding had soon degraded to pulling the piles apart and slinging the cast offs aside in his mad search for the perfect reproduction of Pooty, the soft, white pet rabbit of his youth. 

 

 

Polly, after witnessing the best demonstration of insanity she’d seen in a good long while, stood slack-jawed in bewilderment and thought who was going to clean up this mess because she wasn’t about to miss her break. She really had to pee.

 

 

“Welcome to Wal-Mart” boomed the amplifier overhead. Welcome to chaos was more like it. Why was he here? Didn’t he hate this place? Too much chaos, too-close aisles that made a body feel trapped like so much cattle flooded through a chute only to be delivered into the cotton candy aisle which only reminded him of his hunger and what he couldn’t have because sugar was the enemy. It muddled his thinking and all.

 

 

Pooty, Pooty, Pooty! That’s why he was here. He was looking for Pooty! So much so that he pursed his lips and started making the poot sound as he chugged through the aisles looking wildly right and left. “Poot, poot, poot, poot.” A four-year old dropped the bag of Reese’s Pieces he’d just ripped open and shrugged back toward his distracted, pig-tailed, tattooed mother as his 13-month old sister let loose a slurpy giggle accompanied by fistfuls of fingers covered by oodles of teething juice. He didn’t even notice the crunch of Reece’s Pieces underfoot.

 

 

Left, right, left, right, “Welcome to Wal-Mart!” God, he hated this place…a person’d have to be half crazy to even consider shopping at Wal-Mart…although it caught his eye just as he’d looked up to curse the booming voice overhead. Suspended above “our price only 9.99” and corral full of hundreds exactly the same was Pooty. Letting loose a long sigh of relief, he considered himself most fortunate.

Reviews

[No one]

The first thing I imagined was an unkempt man in dirty clothes wandering through Wal-Mart on an acid trip. That man could've been me, at one time, in a former life.

In my opinion, this seems less a story than an excerpt from a story. Why at the end does he consider himself fortunate to have found Pooty? Is this meant as a cliffhanger? Will the readers ever find out why this unnamed man went on this quest to find Pooty?

One thing to think about: A four-year old dropped the bag of Reese's Pieces he'd just ripped open and shrugged back toward his distracted, pig-tailed, tattooed mother as his 13-month old sister let loose a slurpy giggle accompanied by fistfuls of fingers covered by oodles of teething juice. He didn't even notice the crunch of Reece's Pieces underfoot.
1. The first sentence needs a word at the beginning (such as nearby or a prepositional phrase like in his path -stood-) to define the proximity of the child to the protagonist.
2. The pronoun in the second sentence made me stop and reread. The subject of the previous sentence was the four-year-old boy. With that in mind, the word He at the beginning of the next sentence seems to refer to the little boy.
I'll leave notes.
I laughed aloud in certain parts. Bonus points for that!
When you're prompted to use certain words in a poem or story it often feels forced.

[THE BLACK SEAL]

lol it was definately unique

[joshua rainbird]

This is a curious story rich in description that makes the mundane seem exotic. I like the quirkiness of the writing that comes across like the build-up of a belly-laughing comedy routine that always fails to deliver a punch-line. This creates a surreal meandering, much like the endless and somewhat pointless wanderings round a supermarket.

As an observational piece it is superb; as a descriptive piece I find it just a little, and I mean just a little, overdone; the protagonist seems a bit sad, in both meanings, but the cameo characters are delightful; unfortunately, as a story, for me, it doesn't have enough plot and has a lukewarm ending.

I enjoyed reading it, though.
Best wishes
Josh

[Ani Ashford]

Oh wow.... You really painted this picture very well. I can just see this person - well all the persons you described. Empathy for the white-haired employee of Walgreens (some of us have had such situations in our lives as employees). The first image that popped into my mind when reading of the little boy and his pig-tailed mom - is almost laughable, because what I saw was not hair on the head ... sorry, my mind does such strange things either reading about people or seeing them. Your descriptions of every detail were delicious. Well done! - oh... and I had a stuffed rabbit that I could not live without when I was little, so I related to the intense nostalgia, though it a bit insane. Pet rabbits, stuffed rabbits, how appropriate near Easter Bunny time!