GUIDO PETRI

A short story I wrote for my creative writing class

Back to autoindex

I wrote this for my creative writing class. The prompt was based off of Jamaica Kincaid's "Biography of a Dress" and a blogpost from BrainPickings.org , and was given to me by my professor, Cathy Thomas. Here it is:

I was ruler once. King of all writing. Humans used me, nimbly, with their long, slender fingers. The end came by my own lead. I was used for writing and drawing and sketching and doodling, and then... someone used me to imagine my replacement. An object following the footsteps of the industrial revolution, a distant cousin, only tangentially related. I was relegated to nostalgia and tradition, bound by my shortcomings, my faults, my roots. My origins held me back, my constitution unable to keep up with the wishes of mankind. I had made myself obsolete and old. That's probably the worst part: I had done it. I should have realized, braked, thrown myself from my white-and-gray tracks and laid down on the floor, still and unmoving, pretending my head had been chopped off.