"Back up the truck," I whispered under the shade of night.
It was about that time when the moon was up in the sky and the sun would have its turn soon. It was April Fool's Day and O'Neal wanted to play a trick on his Uncle Charlie.
My best friend O'Neal (whose real name was Maurice, but he hated it and liked the name in the middle) asked me to help him. I snuck out of my house and met him at the side of his house in the alley like he asked.
I didn't want to do it when he asked me earlier, and then I asked him: "How are you gonna move his truck into the middle of the street?"
"I know how to do it. I learned how to drive a truck when me and my mom lived at our farm in North Carolina," he said in a way that shut me up. So I did what he asked and made sure there were no cars coming down the street, and ran up to the truck door where he sat at the wheel with a I-hate-you-Uncle-Charlie-for-beating-my-mom-yesterday look on his face.
He looked down at me and asked, "Back up the truck now?"
I looked both ways again and saw only parked cars and street lamps and some cats knocking around something.
"Yeah, do it now,' I whispered.
I caught his here we go look.
He put the truck in reverse.
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You can also LISTEN to the reading of the story (1:38 minutes)
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Creative Content Strategy: Using This Story
1) USE THIS FLASH FICTION STORY in an anti-domestic violence campaign focusing on how it impacts children. Create a number of story scenarios to drive home this point to attract and engage audience stakeholders.
2) USE THE STORY IN A RAW, EDGY marketing campaign about childhood friendships that survive traumatic situations and endure the test of time that leads to happiness in some form--a product, event, fine arts project, or service they share (an antithesis to the traditional "Hallmark" variety content). My friend and I had to instantaneously come up with an intelligent, creative and practical solution under intense stress. The physical approach failed, so we quickly moved on to save his mom from that attack. We worked together to accomplish it. We were both about 11-years-old.
THIS STORY IS JUST ONE IN A SLATE that are either already written as short stories (some written under strict time constraints as the creative structure model) that are to become short film scripts or expanded into larger formats for film, television and theater.
Back Up The Truck is the word prompt used to write this story. Prompts can be very useful when experiencing writer's block, to get straight to the heart of the matter, and as a way to get the creative juices flowing.
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