About a million years ago—last June—Eric James Stone tagged me in the Lucky 7 Challenge. At the time, I was swamped, and though I’d intended to post and pass it on, I forgot. It’s going around again now. (Seasonal like a flu?) Anyway, I saw someone post their seven lines and remembered that I’d already been tagged.
The rules are:
Go to page 7 or 77 of your latest work. Read down to the seventh line and then post online the next seven lines or sentences. Then head off and tag seven more writers.
So, the following are the seven lines following the seventh line on the seventh page of “Forgotten Sonnets from the City of Undoing,” a short story I’m currently working on.
Violetta introduced us to the funeral director, easily picked out from the mourners because he wore a nametag and occasionally rearranged the flowers when people brought more. Violetta told him we were out-of-towners, just going to spend one night. Could he recommend a hotel, a hostel, or anyone who might put up two kids in their spare room? We were only passing through on our way to mumblety-mumble, but what on earth— Who was the boy and what had happened to him?
“He was called Sergio,” the funeral director said. “I don’t know what killed him. I’ve forgotten. It’s terrible. It must be terrible. Everyone has forgotten.”
I tag: Beth Dawkins, Allison Starkweather (Alli, your website is down!), Gary Henderson, Katherine Mankiller, Julie Hannah, Sandy Parsons, and Christopher Kastensmidt. If you don’t want to play, or if you’ve already been tagged and don’t want to play again, feel free to ignore. If you haven’t been tagged and do want to play, feel free to tag yourself in the comments and join in.
1 Comment
Intriguing.