By Jing Wang

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Table of content

1. Sounds and Silence ------------------------------------------------------------- 3

2. Animal Farm -------------------------------------------------------------------- 4

3. Substitute ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5

4. In a Moving Car ---------------------------------------------------------------- 7

5. The Night ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8

6. Good Morning ------------------------------------------------------------------ 10

7. Father and Son ----------------------------------------------------------------- 11

8. Side by Side & Distraction---------------------------------------------------- 14

9. Stories after prompts by classmates ----------------------------------------- 15

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Sounds and Silence

When I walk out of my bedroom, he is standing in the middle of the living room. I

notice something is wrong, not about him, but my apartment: the window is closed.

I walk to the window, open it. Then I hear it, the sound, the sound of the car, people,

wind, everything.

“Why do you show up in my apartment?” I turn around, face him. Now I feel more

comfortable.

He doesn’t say anything, not a single word. He just stares at me as if I know why he

is here. That’s what exactly I hate about him. He never speaks unless it’s necessary.

“Can’t you just have some normal human conversations with me?” I am mad, truly.

He still won’t speak.

“Please, say something. Ok, I know why you are here. But I’m not going. I’ve told

you many times, I AM NOT GOING! I’m fine. Can’t you see that?” I have to talk. I

don’t know if these words are for him or for me. I need to make some sounds.

Finally, he opens his mouth, “I know you are not fine. Go with me, she can help

you.”

“She can help me? No, nobody can!” I have to get out of this place because I can’t

endure his silence anymore.

I run on the street, toward the intersection of the road. There is no more silence, only

the sounds, the sounds of the horn, the brake, the scream.

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Animal Farm

Chimpanzees, butterfly, fox, kangaroo watched a movie quietly in pajamas.

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Substitute

He was Kevin’s substitute for six years. In order to look like Kevin, he tried to emulate

Kevin as much as possible. After such a long time, sometimes he got confused about who

he really was. He showed up in every movie Kevin had acted in, but the only difference

was, no one had ever seen his face. In the first year of his career, he thought maybe he

could be a superstar one day, but this dream was like a bubble: beautiful but fragile.

People already had Kevin, who would care about him?

Today, as usual, he has to substitute a role for Kevin: a car crash follows by

explosion. When he is putting the heavy protection cloth on, he is told Kevin is going to

act in the scene himself, so he can go help Kevin put on the cloth. He doesn’t know why

Kevin suddenly decides to do the part by himself because for six years, Kevin never

acted such dangerous scenes himself. When he is helping Kevin putting on the protection

cloth, Kevin keeps complain how heavy and smelly the cloth is. For that moment, he

feels sad: his entire career is about that heavy and smelly cloth. He is the one who’s

risking his life, but all the glory goes to Kevin. It’s not fair, he thinks, why he can’t be the

one? Finally, Kevin is ready inside the car.

The next moment, the car will get crushed with another car and explode, but because

of some technology errors, the explosion load will be much more than expected. The fire

will be a threat to Kevin’s life. Kevin will try to get out of car himself but fail. The door

of the car will be too twisted to even be opened. Firefighters who are standing by will

rush to the car and try to get Kevin out. However, it will be too late.

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Kevin steps on the accelerator.

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In a Moving Car “Wait, where is the driver?”

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The Night

--After Sherwood Anderson

He has been working in the same building for six years, but with so many employees

and employers coming in and out every day, hardly anyone has noticed him. Only some

of those diligent workers who stayed in the office until 9 o’clock in the night would ever

have the slight chance of encountering him. But walking into someone like him would

probably not be a pleasant experience: he was dwarfed and haggard in his security suit;

his face was pale as a paper; the hair, without gloss, was twisted together like withered

grass. Despite his ghostly appearance, he was actually a genial person. Whenever he

encountered someone during his night patrol, that person would take a step back from

him instinctively and walk away as quickly as possible. Every time people put on this

“why are you here to scare me” face, he would not get angry but endeavor to smile and

apologize, to explain that he was the night security guard here.

His mother said he was born at mid-night, so God owes him a good night sleep. Yet

it seemed that he would not be having a good night sleep for the rest of his life if he

insisted to keeping this job. He didn’t show any intention to change the job in the past six

years because he regarded being a night security guard as his destiny. “Destiny” was one

of his favorite words and one thing he firmly believed in since second grade. He

remembered since he was a child, his mother repeatedly murmured to herself that,

“That’s my destiny to have this child.” At that time, he was too young to understand that

he was the kind of children who was given birth to this world by a mistake. His

innocence made him dare to ask endless things from his mother: toy cars, new shoes,

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cartoons, etc. Maybe it’s his greedy desires finally provoked his mother to leave him in a

local charity. From that time on, he stopped requesting for anything because he believed

that it was his destiny to stay quiet since he shouldn’t be born anyway.

Therefore, when he ended up as a night security guard, he even bought himself

Chinese food to celebrate that he finally found his position in the world. Long-term of

night work already evolved him into a nocturnal animal with bad eyes, but sensible

hearing. The traits made him perfectly suitable for this job that he thought he was going

to spend the rest of his life like that, until one day he was asked to switch to a morning

turn because of an emergency.

It was the first day he heard men and women talking; elevators moving up and down;

high heels stepping on the floor. Unlike in the deadly silent night, he was a loner; now he

felt the vigorous which he haven’t experienced for a long time. When he went on his

routine patrol, people nodded and said “hi” to him instead walked to the opposite

direction as if they saw something they shouldn’t see. He was so overwhelmed by these

sudden changes that he didn’t notice the dead seeds inside his heart started to resurgent

again. For a moment, he felt that he could be part of other people’s life.

On his way down in the elevator, a man stood next to him looked at his security suit

and asked him, “Are you the new security guard in the building? What’s your name?”

He smiled and said in a quivered voice, “I’m Colby.”

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Good morning

Along the road, the ringing sound of a bird echoed inside the woods, broke the silence

and revived the trees after a night’s lonely darkness. Tinged with sunshine, the surface of

the lake sparkled like scattered diamond shatters. As every car rushed by, the lake would

memorize its glimpse. When I opened the window, I could smell the morning slip into

the car.

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Father and Son

After father left us three years ago, my mother never stopped blind-dating. I didn’t

understand she was so impatiently trying to start a new marriage while she told me to

never believe in men.

My existence seemed to be a burden to my mother’s second marriage. No men

wanted to marry a woman with a daughter. She didn’t give up. Finally, her insistence

brought her what she wanted: someone she could marry to. I could clearly remember

when he glanced at me with his indifferent eyes.

Soon, they made the deal.

We moved to his house in a frigid winter, probably the coldest winter in my life. The

bald branches of the tree outside the house were swaying in wind. I sat on the sofa

holding a hot water in my hand, but as I saw the shadow of that monstrous like tree

through the curtain, I felt the chillness on my back. I looked around the living room and

found out they had a bird cage hanging on the ceiling. The weird thing was there was not

a bird in it.

It was the first time I met his son. He was not like his father, his eyes were gentle.

“This is Henry.” Then the man turned to Henry, “And this is Ally, try to get along with

her.” I didn’t like the way that man talked, the sound of his voice was like using the nail

to slide through a glass. But Henry seemed different with a boyish smile on his face. His

innocence at least gave me a little bit comfort.

That night, I was not able to sleep, just like the night before I came here. Mother was

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lying next to me, and I asked her why she wanted to get the second marriage. She said, in

a mild voice, “Women have to get marry, so there is someone to rely on.” I said why we

have to rely on someone else? She couldn’t answer.

The next day, the man brought home a bird and put it into the cage. I asked why

there was not a bird before. He told me nobody had time to take care of it before, but

now he got my mother. The bird had a beautiful feather and a ringing voice, full of

liveliness. It seemed looking forward to its brand new live.

Mother started a new live too. She didn’t have to work anymore. I wondered if it’s

why mother wanted to get marry. But she had endless housework to do, even when we

were eating dinner, the man would order her, “Can you give me a glass of water?” She

never refused his request. I couldn’t bear her obedience to him, but I wasn’t able to say

anything. I knew that I was the bottom level at pyramid. My voice would never be heard.

I felt mother was getting older and more silent everyday. After a day’s work, her

would sit down, looked at the blue sky through the window. One day I went sit beside her

and asked, “Mom, why don’t you tell him that you wanted to go out and work.” She

shook her head disappointedly and regretfully, “it’s too late, we made the deal.”

The bird didn’t seem to be lively anymore. The burnish on its feather disappeared. It

stopped singing, as if it never sang. Henry was not happy about this. He found a branch

to tease the bird. The bird flew up and down fearfully in the cage to avoid that branch.

However, Henry was having fun with that.

Then summer came; the man took us to fishing. He seemed like an expertise in

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fishing. He picked a spot, set up the fishing rod, sat there patiently for the fish to eat the

bait. On the other hand, Henry knew nothing about fishing He was very impatient, every

two minutes he picked up the rod to see if any fish bite the bait. It was already noon, the

sun shined fervently. Henry asked me, “Ally, can I have your bottle of water? I drank up

mine.” I looked at the water bottle in my hand, hesitate, feeling the dryness in my mouth.

Mine body ran out of water too. Finally, I passed him the water bottle. I look at him,

found out he looked more and more like his father.

Suddenly, I heard that man shouting, “I got it!” The fish was still struggling

desperately in his hand, trying to take the last few breaths. The hot weather made me feel

out of breathes. I was so thirsty; the water in my body was evaporating in a quick speed.

Without water, dying was a matter of time.

The fish started to sway its body more violently.

“I want water!”

All of a sudden, the hands couldn’t hold on to the fish anymore. It was finally free

from the hands. “Oh shoot, that damn fish!” the man cursed in a disgusting manner.

After we went back home, I opened the cage for the bird. It hesitated for seconds, but

finally flew out of the cage to the sky. I never knew what happened to it afterwards,

maybe it would die because it didn’t know how to live on its own. But at least it

experienced the freedom it wanted. My mother never made her decision. She was lonely,

but she didn’t make any change. Two years later, when I was able to make my own living,

I moved out, far away from that frosty house, father and son.

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Side by side

Deep inside the forest, two gravestones stood side by side. At night, the residents in these

two gravestones always liked to come out and have a little conversation. One day, one

said to another, “Why are people mortal?” The other looked at the tree, “Because trees

can’t walk.”

Distraction

Mark sat absent-mindedly in the classroom thinking about he could ride his new

motorcycle after school. The teacher noticed Mark was not listening, so called him to

answer the question “What is freedom?” Flurried and accidentally saw the picture of

Buddha on the wall, Mark blurted out, “Buddha on a motorcycle.”

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Neighbor

There’s a huge blizzard outside, so you’re trapped in your house. You’re very bored and

can’t figure out what to do. You decide that baking is always fun and entertaining on

snowy days. You look through the cabinet and find brownie mix, cake mix, cookie mix,

and muffin mix, but there’s one problem. They all require eggs, but you have no eggs.

You choose to venture out in the blizzard to go to the store because you are so bored.

What happens?

When you finally arrive at the store, you see your next door neighbor coming out

with a bag of baking mix but no eggs.

Too Close

You decide to go to the natural history museum on a boring Friday. As you walk in, you

notice there is a new exhibit, "Early Settlers of North America." As you walk through,

you notice something odd. In one village recreation scene, one particular skeleton seems

to have four arms. Tell his story.

“I have to talk to whoever is in charge in the museum. Who told them they can put

two skeletons so close.”

Tasty?

You wake up in the morning, and realize your world is different. Lying on your kitchen

table, you look up to see the fan swiveling much farther above your head than you

remember it. The proportions of the world you once knew are much larger than yesterday.

Looking around, you realize the salt and pepper shakers are as tall as you are. Then you

look down… crap. You’re a pancake.

First you are so panic, but then you think, “Am I taste good?”

Wrong Timing

Oksona Alyona Karamazova knows that the diamonds have been hidden in the disco ball.

The foolish American bouncers are easily tricked by a false identification card. As soon

as she is inside the disco-tech men swarm her, but she did not travel back to the year

1971 to be wooed by foolish American males. She came to steal diamonds.

As she searches the diamonds, she passes by a man who is reading the newspaper.

Today’s date: Nov. 10, 1970.

The End

Jane’s friend’s always said she never got out that much ever since Greg left her. One

Saturday she decided to take a chance and party with her friends. As she was getting

ready she got a phone call from Greg. He begged and pleated for her to take him back.

After the conversation she put the phone down and walked out her apartment.

The phone is still ringing tirelessly in her apartment. It’s from Grey.

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Mirror

A woman in her mid twenties is sleeping in her small bed on an autumn night. She is

recently out of college and lives in a small apartment by herself. When she wakes up, she

looks in the mirror and screams. Her long blonde hair has been shaved off. All the

windows and doors are locked closed, and there are no signs that anyone was in the

apartment. What happened?

From the mirror, she sees “herself” is lying on the bed. The coal gas is on. “Am I

still alive?”

Superheroes

You get home and flip open your laptop to get started on your homework, you turn away

to get out your books and when you look back at the screen, you don’t see the English

assignment there before. Instead, your computer screen is red, with a flashing nuclear

symbol in the top right and a rapidly changing body of numbers. Above it is written,

DELTA-FOXTROT-VICTOR-HOTEL-ZULU-ALPHA in all caps. All of a sudden

your screen is replaced with a map of the world, with red circles on many cities, mainly

in Russia, North Korea, Cuba, and China, but many on the east and west coast cities of

the United States! I timer underneath reads 3:10:56, 3:10:55, 3:10:54…

“OMG!” You rush to your closet and pull out many costumes: superman, batman,

Spiderman, “Which one should I wear to save the world?”

Too Late

You change the channel rapidly to find the news, just in time to hear the announcement

you were waiting for. The President of the United States is wrapping up a long speech

and finishes it off with “So I officially state, my dear America, that starting at this point,

all laws and rules have officially been removed.” You can’t believe what you’ve just

heard. The rumors are true…

You want to go outside and enjoy some freedom, but you find you are too old to

move, “Why can’t the news be announced earlier?”

The Truth

A very rich girl is going to marry a guy. The night before the wedding, she finds a box

with three other passports with the same picture of the guy but different names. What’s

the story?

“Should I tell him I am wanted?”

Losing pieces

You wake up on the floor with sweat dripping down your face. You grab your shirt and

realize that you’re still wearing your running uniform. Voices are now heard from up

ahead and you think to yourself, “Hmm..I still have time to finish the race.” As the feet of

other runners go by you, you try to get up, but it seems difficult. A woman stops you with

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a smile and says, “Here’s your shoes, Robert. You’re not going anywhere.”

You look down at your feet, but they are gone altogether with your shoes.

Evolution

Your biology paper on the theory of evolution is due tomorrow but you are still working

on it. You decide to finish this paper titled From Apes to Human Beings tonight. It is

almost done in the mid night. Suddenly, someone knocks the door. Who is it at this time?

You open the door and then get shocked. It is an ape. It walks into your room and pick up

your paper. What happens next?

The ape looks at the paper and looks at you, says, “Is that how you become human

being?”