Indies Unlimited - an unlimited source of great advice for authors - has a writing contest each week. While winning it seems directly related to your personal popularity as opposed to your prose (you have to cadge votes from friends and relatives), they suggest using your entry as a blog post. It provides exposure after all, as well as excellent writing practice. So here's my 250 words about a Philosopher Cow.
Henrietta stretched her lovely
white face on its brown, bovine neck as far as she could. She was oh-so-careful
not to move laterally – the barbed wire on the fence was inconsiderate about
poking holes in a girl's hide. All she wanted was to reach that gorgeous clump
of green deliciousness barely beyond reach of her mobile tongue and lips. Was
that so much to ask from life?
Across the field, behind her, men loaded
the unfortunates chosen for this week's 'bad ride.' Henrietta ignored them, in spite of the piteous
cries from her aging, now-barren friends Gertrude and Mildred as they were hustled
into the truck. Henrietta knew her turn would
come, but before it did she wanted more from life than the desiccated hay and
sparse, picked-over growths in this field. She did not know why, but she believed:
the grass on the other side would surely taste better – fresher. Cleaner. Free.
Blowing a great sigh, Henrietta
lifted her head and stepped back from the fence for a moment. Beyond her painful boundaries, the fields
rolled in gentle, green waves, their flow to the dusty azure of the distant
mountains interrupted only by a line of trees that followed a creek.
The truck was loaded. The cowboys
slammed the gates and locked them; the driver honked twice. The herd purposefully ignored the terrified
lowing of their members making the final journey.
Henrietta pushed carefully at the
barbed wire again. She would taste that clump before her turn came.
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