Skąd bierze Pan/Pani pomysły na swoje opowieści? Gdzie i jak najczęściej wpada Pan/Pani na pomysł na nową książkę? To chyba najczęściej zadawane pisarzom pytania. Czytelników cały czas nurtuje jak to się dzieje, że pisarzowi nigdy nie brak pomysłów na teksty.
Nieco inaczej wygląda sytuacja w przypadku studentów biorących udział w kursie z Pisania kreatywnego. Studenci przyznają, że często brak im pomysłów na swoje teksty. A przecież pomysły są wszędzie! Na każdym kroku! Trzeba tylko umieć je dostrzegać! I utrwalać! Dlatego też na jednym ze spotkań studenci filologii angielskiej AHE w Łodzi zostali poproszeni o napisanie fragmentu opowiadania do zdjęcia przedstawionego (i zrobionego!) przez prowadzącą kurs, dr Olę Majchrzak. Niebieskie niebo, spalona słońcem trawa i zniszczony budynek na pierwszym planie, najprawdopodobniej dawnej stodoły. Niby nic, a jakie historie powstały! Zresztą przekonajcie się sami!
The Madness Within
Did you ever wonder why someone would hate the old barn so much that he set fire to it? This story goes back twenty years.
There was a young family with a medium house with slightly scratched plaster and a small, lively farm. Their life was decent until one year before the tragedy. A young man, the owner of the farm, started to change. He was sure that his wife, a petite and fragile woman, kept a huge, hurtful secret behind his back. He knew that even his little daughter kept her mom's side and it was making him even more mad. This madness that he felt was the main reason why the family started to be afraid of him. But was there a reason for him to be that angry? The man’s mind started playing tricks on him. It brought a lot of fake images of what his wife would do behind his back, from hiding his favorite newspaper to even worse, unbelievable things. At the end of the summer, he finally accused her of one of the worst sins: betrayal.
One night, when he made sure that their daughter was sleeping, he asked his wife to follow him to the barn. "I have a surprise for you," that's what he said. Poor woman! If she had known what would happen to her...
The man, once in the barn, changed his personality in the blink of an eye. He pushed the poor woman on the hay and pulled out a little pocket knife from a sleeve. He cut her until the hay under her petite, fragile body turned all red. When he made sure his wife was dead, his madness slowly turned into despair. The man realized what he did to the love of his life and he couldn't stand it. He couldn't look at her, he couldn't look at himself.
He took an old kerosene lamp from the wooden, dusty shelf. With this horrible despair eating his mind and heart, within this hate towards himself, the man threw the lamp into hay before ending his life. The last scene was him hanging himself right before his dead wife's eyes.
Little did he know that his daughter didn't sleep that night and that she saw everything from the window of their house.
And this daughter was me.
Autor: Natalia Pospieszyńska
It was the same old barn that had always stood there. No one really knew whose it was, nor did anyone care. The amount of damage and disrepair had basically made it into trash. Unwanted and unneeded by anyone. Except for Mark. A place like this would do him wonders in his current predicament. While the many holes in the walls were a bit, well, revealing for lack of a better word, there was a neat little corner that would be perfect. Formed by the joining of the brick wall and wooden door, it was completely obscured by shadow and one of the last standing structural support beams. Were someone to hide something there and make sure it didn't stand out a whole lot out of the dead grass, it would remain there unseen.
His little companion now started feeling heavier and heavier as he dragged him behind in a black trash bag. The red trail stopped a few feet earlier so there was no clear line back to the spot. Mark threw the "cargo" right where he wanted and concealed it with a bit of the surrounding dirt and grass. Looked fine. He stepped back a bit to see if it wasn't too visible. No, it seemed alright. Brushing off bits of rock and rotten wood off his coat, he left the premises unseen. Or so he thought.
Autor: Michał Mrulewicz
So we stood in front of the building which once had seemed so big and mighty, now falling apart before our very eyes. All the time we spent gazing at the wooden door did not help us actually notice it. We were not really there, we were traveling. We were inside staring out of the window. Struggling to take a step on the steep stairs. Running to the dining room to drink some warm milk. Leaving to go to school and coming back to see nothing is left except for the two walls that could shelter us.
Teardrops running down my warm cheeks made me come back to reality. I tightened my fist and rested my other palm on the badge in my pocket. I had to find out.
Autor: Kaja Pruchniewska
She ran as fast as possible and the wind was resisting her. Her legs and lungs were slowly failing to obey her. Sweat condensed on her forehead. It was hot, although the sun was just about to rise. She wanted to be as far away from that place as possible. As she ran, she pinched her arms, praying that this night would only be a bad dream. Now and then she looked behind, thinking back to the tragedy that took place several minutes ago.
She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to catch her breath. Despite the girl being only 20 springs, she was losing strength with every step like an elderly, sick person. She had just stopped crying, but the tears streamed back to her large blue eyes.
She knew she couldn't run any further. So she slowed down and spotted the old barn from a distance. At the same time, she felt cool drops of water running down her arms. Clouds formed and began to cry, and she cried with them.
She knew she couldn't stop, but she was so exhausted that she decided to rest in a decaying building several hundred meters away. So she gathered up the last of her strength and started running towards the barn. The closer she got, the harder it was to run. The long, dry grass hurt her legs over and over again. However, under the influence of emotions and adrenaline, she didn't feel it at all.
She entered a deserted building and fell limp to her knees out of exhaustion.
Then, looking down, she noticed blood on her hands for the first time and burst into tears again, knowing that what had happened was not a bad dream at all.
Autor: Wiktoria Wiktorowska