Literary Lion: Wall of Words

Posted on by Louise Bunting

This post is for the Literary Lion flash fiction challenge, run by .  This challenge gives a prompt word – this week’s is ‘Limerick’ – and asks that you write a story in less than 400 words. Usually I’ll use every single word available but I somehow managed to write this in only 151! I hope you all like it.

asylum
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Wall of Words

Sometimes it was hard to remember that her life had once been normal, that she’d been a wife and mother, with friends she met for coffee and a boss she liked to complain about. Those times were long gone.

“There was a young lady named Hesta,” she told the nurse who administered her medication, “who wanted to work as a jester.”

The nurse merely raised an eyebrow and left the padded cell before Polly could continue. She didn’t mind. It was easier when she was alone.

The rhymes were the prison walls she built to confine the being who sought to control her; a barrier of words from which it couldn’t emerge, no matter how hard it tried. The creature’s rage was never-ending: curses and screams echoing within her mind from earliest morning until late at night.

It had already forced her hands to kill once. It wouldn’t do so again.

Word Count: 151

I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide whether or not the creature is real or just a figment of Polly’s disturbed mind…

I did write a whole limerick to go in this post but then decided I didn’t really need to include it all. I thought I’d share it anyway.

There was a young lady named Hesta,
Who wanted to work as a jester,
Her parent’s said, ‘No –
‘You never will go!’
So it was time for Hesta to pester.

13 thoughts on “Literary Lion: Wall of Words”

  6. I really like that you didn’t include the entire limerick in the story. Somehow that just adds to the claustrophobic atmosphere. Good stuff 🙂

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