Teaching Narrative Writing with Frankenstories

Once upon a time there were a fisherman and his wife who lived together in a shack that was so filthy it might as well have been a pisspot. Every day the fisherman went out to fish, and he fished and he fished. One day he sat there looking down into the clear water, and he sat, and he sat, and his line went all the way down to the bottom of the sea. And when he pulled it out, there was a great big flounder on the hook.

The flounder came up and said, "Well, what does she want?"

"Oh, there you are. Well, it's not my idea, you understand, but what she says is I should have asked you to grant a wish. And she told me what to wish for. She says she's tired of living in a shack like a pisspot, and she wants to live in a cottage."

“Go home," said the flounder. “She's got her wish already."

The fisherman went home, and there was his wife standing in front of a neat little cottage.

“There!” she said. "Isn’t that better?"

Everything was fine for a week or two. Then the wife said, "Listen to me. This cottage is too small. I can barely turn around in the kitchen, and as for the garden, half a dozen steps and you've reached the other side. It's not good enough. That flounder could have given us a bigger place if he'd wanted to, it's all the same to him. I want to live in a palace all made of marble. Go back and ask him for a palace."

"Oh, wife," said the man, "this is good enough for us. We don't want a palace. What would we do in a palace?"

"Plenty of things," said his wife. "You're a defeatist, that's what you are. Go on, go and ask for a palace."

"Oh, dear, I don't know . . . He's just given us the cottage. I don't want to bother him again. He might get angry with me."

"Don't be so feeble. He can do it. He won't mind a bit. Go on."

The fisherman felt bad about it. He didn't want to go at all. "It's not right," he said to himself, but he went anyway.

"I want to be God. I want to cause the sun and the moon to rise. I can't bear it when I see them rising and I haven't had anything to do with it. But if I were God, I could make it all happen. I could make them go backwards if I wanted. So go and tell the flounder I want to be God."

He rubbed his eyes and looked at her, but she looked so crazy that he was scared, and got out of bed quickly.

"Now!" she screamed. "Go!"

"Oh, please, wife," begged the poor man, falling to his knees, "think again, my love, think again. The flounder made you emperor and he made you pope, but he can't make you God. That's really impossible."

She flew out of bed and hit him, her hair sticking out wildly from her head, her eyes rolling. She tore off her nightdress and screamed and stamped, shouting, "I can't bear it to wait so long! You're driving me insane! Go and do as I tell you right now!"

The fisherman tugged on his trousers, hopping out of the bedroom, and ran to the seashore. There was such a storm raging that he could hardly stand up against it. Rain lashed his face, trees were being torn up from the ground, houses were tumbled in every direction as great boulders came flying through the air, torn off the cliffs. The thunder crashed and the lightning flared, and the waves on the sea were as high as churches and castles and mountains, with sheets of foam flying from their crests.

“What does she want?”

“Well, you see, she wants to be God.”

“Go home. She’s back in the pisspot.”

And so she was, and there they are to this day.

Gramps says that I am a country girl at heart, and that is true. I have lived most of my thirteen years in Bybanks, Kentucky, which is not much more than a caboodle of houses roosting in a green spot alongside the Ohio River. Just over a year ago, my father plucked me up like a weed and took me and all our belongings (no, that is not true—he did not bring the chestnut tree, the willow, the maple, the hayloft, or the swimming hole, which all belonged to me) and we drove three hundred miles straight north and stopped in front of a house in Euclid, Ohio.

"No trees?" I said. "This is where we're going to live?"

"No," my father said. "This is Margaret's house."

The front door of the house opened and a lady with wild red hair stood there. I looked up and down the street. The houses were all jammed together like a row of birdhouses. In front of each house was a tiny square of grass, and in front of that was a thin gray sidewalk running alongside a gray road.

"Where's the barn?" I asked. "The river? The swimming hole?"

"Oh, Sal," my father said. "Come on. There's Margaret." He waved to the lady at the door.

"We have to go back. I forgot something."

The lady with the wild red hair opened the door and came out onto the porch.

"In the back of my closet," I said, "under the floorboards. I put something there, and I've got to have it."

"Don't be a goose. Come and see Margaret."

I did not want to see Margaret.

Ben and Phoebe and Mrs. Cadaver and Mrs. Partridge are all coming to visit next month. There is a chance that Mr. Birkway might come as well, but Phoebe hopes not, as she does not think she could stand to be in a car for that long with a teacher. My father and I have been scrubbing the house for their visit. I can't wait to show Phoebe and Ben the swimming hole and the fields, the hayloft and the trees, and the cows and the chickens. Blackberry, the chicken that Ben gave me, is queen of the coop, and I'll show Ben her too. I am hoping, also, for some blackberry kisses.

But for now, Gramps has his beagle, and I have a chicken and a singing tree, and that's the way it is.

Huzza, huzza.