Weekend Write-In Story Collection

An Inventive Busker

In 500 words, tell a story in which a busker's performance has an uncanny effect. Written for the Weekend Write-In Challenge: "Busker" — 11-13 November 2016.

David discusses foundations with Grandpa

An Inventive Busker

"Why the glum look, David?"

"Sister Mercedes gave me a D on my composition assignment, Grandpa."

"That's not unusual for her, Sweetheart. She rarely understands your twists."

"Yes, but this time she made me write on the board: I will not use foul language in my writing. Five hundred times, Grandpa, she made me write it five hundred times." He shook his right hand and grimaced. "This kept going numb."

Grandfather patted the couch cushion. "Come, let's look at the piece you wrote. See if we can sort out what she found offensive."

"Sister Mercedes ripped it to shreds and threw it in the wastebasket. She said it was too vile to keep." David flopped onto the couch as he pulled a sheet of paper from his binder. "Here's my final draft, before I wrote it to good. We had to write a story about a busker's performance having an uncanny effect. I thought that everyone else would do theirs about a street performer."

"Be difficult to come up with an alternate interpretation." Grandpa stroked his beard and put on his thinking expression. "Let me guess. Her foul language opinion leads me to think you wrote about busks." He smiled down at David's grinning nods.

"Yes, my story was about a man who modified the design of tapered busks. I started with the tradition of men having wood, bone or ivory busks decoratively engraved with mushy words and giving them to their girlfriends. Then I introduced my busk maker, who did a lot of these. In 1879 he designed a new shape to get rid of the bulge of the belly below the corset. His spoon busk fad quickly grew, and women's waists got smaller and smaller."

Grandpa stroked David's blonde curls and laughed. "I see now why Sister Mert was offended. Your getting into women's underwear wouldn't sit well with her narrowed and distorted religious views."

David looked up and nodded. "Yeah, she has some really strange ideas. But then so did the women who allowed themselves to be tortured by the tighter and tighter lacing." He shook his head. "Why do girls do such strange things to themselves? Corsets, makeup, uncomfortable shoes, stuffing their bras..."

"How do you know about stuffing bras?"

"Kate told me. She said that's why some of the other girls have bigger... Why they're bigger in the front."

"Breasts, Sweetheart. Nothing at all wrong with calling them breasts." He glanced down at David and smiled. "You're thirteen now; old enough to begin appreciating them. Did you write about breasts? That may be what offend Mert."

"No, I kept the piece to the corset, the busks and the busker, then worked toward the uncanny theme."

"I'm trying to imagine how you would have done that."

"Once the man had found a way to control the bulge at the bottom of the corset's front, he started designing busks for the back to reduce the bulge of flesh across the women's bums. The tighter lacing had made their cans large, and he wanted to help women be more uncanny."

"Doh!"