First Writing Assignment: Mary and Bob

This first assignment drove me nuts. I got it on Friday and thought about it all weekend long. On Monday I wrote out a rough draft and Monday night tried to make it better. So here were the rules...just so you know why this one nearly drove me to drink.

1. We were given 5 partial sentences to choose from and the sentence you chose had to be the first sentence of your story.

2. Must contain dialogue.

3. This one was the bitch...less than 300 words and had to have a twist to the story at the end.

I chose "Mary was "fed up" with Bob and"... this was all I had to go with. So here is what I came up with after 4 days of driving myself nuts.

Mary was “fed up” with Bob and his wandering eye. They had only been living here for a few months now and she has caught Bob looking across the street at the neighbor more times than she can count. The woman is beautiful, looks amazing in a bikini and pretty much anything she wears. Mary looks over and Bob is gazing out the window at the neighbor yet again. Mary knows things have not been right between them for years. He rarely looks at her in the eyes anymore and hasn’t touched her in months. Their relationship had turned into something platonic. She too yearned for more in this life, but they had been through so much.

Bob can see Mary watching him out of the corner of his eye. “Does she know that I don’t want to be here anymore? Does she know how unhappy I am?” Bob thinks to himself. Their eyes meet in the reflection of the glass and they quickly look away.

Mary wonders what the neighbor has that she doesn’t? So she looks great in whatever she wears. Big deal. Maybe it is her long blonde hair. Mary’s hair had always been red; she had always wanted to be a blonde. “If I were blonde would he want me again?” Mary sadly asks herself.

The day goes by slowly…Mary sees Bob watching the neighbor a few more times that day. Worrying about this has just worn her out. It had drained her of energy, like their relationship was drained of its life. Mary hears the glass door behind them sliding open, sees the new clothes with the Macy’s tags on them that she will get to wear and thinks, “a new outfit…I bet this time I will look better than the dummy across the street.”

This has been turned in and so far gotten one positive comment from another student. I am still waiting on a comment from the professor. I really hope tomorrow's assignment is a little less stressful.