Listen to J.R. Angelella read 'You Wake Up And The Virgin Mary Statue On Your Dresser Is Crying Blood'
This is the first line of your story. Write it and send it back to me. Don't forget to write it in second person. You should mention whores and booze and drugs and cigarettes in your story, but I don't want to influence you. Your story should be inherently you, not me, even though that's what I would do if it were my story. The Virgin Mary crying blood is enough to get you started. You should also not be offended by this image, after all a statue is only made of paint and water and clay and sometimes shattered glass. Remember: a statue only has meaning if you give it dependability.
You wake up and the Virgin Mary statue on your dresser is crying blood. Barely awake in the twisted sheets, still wet from squeezed bodies, you stare at the statue next to a jewelry box on the dresser. Some other guy's wife wakes next to you and watches you watch the blood. She rolls on top of you. You point to the statue.
She says, Oh, that thing. Happens all the time.
Blood swells in your dark places as it does in hers. The Virgin Mary stops crying blood. She closes her eyes and sets her hands at her chest to pray.
You wake up and the Virgin Mary statue on your dresser is crying blood. You wonder where the statue came from, if the German dude, Demetri, who's renting out the other room in your apartment, if this is his form of a joke. You examine the statue, the red running down her cheeks and over her hands set in prayer at her chest. You look in the mirror at your eyes which have both been punched black by that bouncer at the bar tonight. Your face looks cracked like marbles thumbed a thousand times against concrete walls. You never meant to start a damn brawl. All you meant to do was stop that Iraqi vet from destroying his girl and somehow it's your fault. You have a hero complex. So what? A voice says, "Virgin May," which is weird because you are neither a virgin nor a Mary. Your name is Paul and you lost your virginity at the age of fourteen to a chick who was hitchhiking out of Ohio, headed to New York City.
You wake up and the Virgin Mary statue on your dresser is crying blood. You forget from your eighth grade biology class how many pints the human body actually holds because the way you are writing this story, this thing is bleeding way more than that. You want to say eight, but have no idea if that is even close. You think about calling him to ask if it is important to the story for the characters to know how many pints of blood there are, but know that he hasn't the faintest idea either, nor does he care. He will most likely tell you to add a whore or drugs or foul language to the story. He will probably ask if you are writing in second person. Then he will ask if your character has smoked a cigarette yet.
You wake up and the Virgin Mary statue on your dresser is crying blood. You smoke a cigarette. The whore you bought and fucked last night must have left hours ago, because the door to your rented room in the highway hotel is open and a hunch-backed man slides by dragging a plastic bag of ice. You light another cigarette. You swig some scotch. You shoot the last of the heroin. No, you smoke it. You fart and burp and your dick gets hard. The statue still cries and you rub your eyes and realize that your eyes are bleeding now too. You touch your fingers to your tongue. The blood tastes like blood. Her eyes blink and she stands from her kneeling position. Mary pulls a cigarette out from inside her head-wrap and asks you for a light. This is the moment you realize you have an addiction.
You wake up and the Virgin Mary statue on your dresser is crying blood. Your prayers are answered! The blessed mother has answered your prayers! You're not sure why Mary chose tears of blood as the sign, but you accept it. Yes. Yes. Yes. Prayer works after all. Yes. She has answered you. Yes. Your only question now is will your Mom and Dad get you the red one or the black one? The insurance on the red one will be more, so you beg—please, please, please let it be the black one. Black would attract all the ladies! You pray again for the black one with a moon roof and some sick silver rims. You say, Yes, Mary, yes, yes, yes. Will you please make it a black one?
You wake up and the Virgin Mary statue on your dresser is crying blood. This is the line that you gave me. You say this will be the start to my story. You say most minimalist masterpieces are written in second person. You want to see how I twist God and his mother into some bizarre minimalist, post-modern, transgressive world. Mary gave birth to a baby without ever having sex after all and, to be honest, you can't get more minimalist than that.
About the author:
J.R. Angelella was born in Baltimore and lives in Brooklyn. He is a recent graduated from the Bennington Writing Seminars where he received an MFA in Writing. His fiction has been published in the Boston Literary Magazine, Twelve Stories and The Literary Review. He is currently at work on his first novel. Visit him @ The Agonist II (http://www.jrangelella.blogspot.com).
© 2009 Word Riot
