As
said in class: this week's "mini homework assignment." Below this
post, write a brief summary of a possible short story for our character:
Patrick
Hughes is 10 years old. He is "positive and active" and has
"attractive eyes" that somehow cause other men to become interested
in him. Despite these attractive eyes, he can be described as "ugly and
minute" in his appearance. His life is not easy. He comes from a broken
home of divorced parents, and recently he is suffering stress at the prospect
of "losing his best friend."
Now...
go ahead and pitch an idea for a Day In The Life of Patrick Hughes. It can be a
simple story that somehow reaches out to readers in a simple way. No need for
dragons or burning planes or alien abductions.
Patrick Hughes, a 10-year-old
boy, rubs his sleepy eyes as a cold breeze hits him on the cheeks. He then sits
straight on the bench he was sleeping on, an icy bench at Coney Island subway station.
Getting his brown, leather shoes on, he momentarily thinks of his home back in
the peaceful countryside of Connecticut. Those shoes, being the only possession
of Patrick worth more than ten bucks, were his mother’s farewell present as she
slammed the door shut before Patrick and his jobless, incapable father, who had
been exhibiting mental disorder for some time. Yes, Patrick had a hard time
getting along with boys of his age at school—which he eventually never did—but
that could not have forced his mother to divorce against her spouse. His weird
appearance, with the awkward mixture of charming eyes and his somewhat
unfriendly face, also could not have driven her away. It surely must have been
his father. With all those evanescent thoughts sweeping past him, Patrick
resolves to himself that today would be another fine day—though not great it
may be—and skips towards the stairways of the underground Metro. Just as the
antique but gloomy streets of Brooklyn appear before his eyes, crowds of
people, most with black or dark gray coats on, hurriedly walks past him as if
they all were headed somewhere. Even from a few feet away, our Patrick Hughes
is simply no longer to be found, as the black and gray blurred his presence from
all the others. But as the fact that he managed to live along the wooden bench
of subway station and a bunch of homeless indicates, Patrick Hughes is a smart
boy, smart enough to know how to utilize the best of what he has. Not after
much walking, he slips into a convenience store near the station. With a bottle
of coke and Hershey’s Chocolate bars in hand, Patrick then flickers his eyes and
smiles before the cashier, who seem no older than Patrick’s older brother—if he
ever had one. The cashier, subsequently and immediately, shoots back a lovely
smile at him and kindly opens the exit for Patrick without even asking him to
pay for the coke and chocolate. Patrick gently closes the door behind him and
heads towards the station as if nothing really happened. Indeed he is quite
anxious that people may come to acknowledge his special talent, for he was estranged
from his closest buddies both at school and the subway station as they came to
fear him after witnessing his magic. As walking downwards along the dark staircase
of New York City Metro station, he recalls a girl who had spent some time with
him on the wooden bench, but soon abandoned him—or rather, ‘ran away’—after
discovering her friend’s somewhat spooky ability. “Old things are old things,”
he mutters, as he peels off the wrapper of his Hershey’s and drank a sit of
Coke. The chocolate had not melted even a bit in spite that he grabbed it tight
all along, and the drink was still cold and fresh. ‘No wonder it’s fall.’ A
cold breeze, coming all the way from the dreary streets of Brooklyn to the
murky hallways of the station, hit him on his red cheeks again.
