Short Story: Dear Shirley Jackson
Creepy little story about the subtle horror of closed society. 4-minute read.
This piece is a response to a 1948 story titled "The Lottery.” It was written by Shirley Jackson and first published in The New Yorker. The story below will make a lot more sense if you read that one first.
“Dear Shirley Jackson”
Dear Ms. Jackson,
I read your story The Lottery this morning with my lemon scone and black coffee while my husband John read the newspaper. This was not the story I expected over breakfast.
“The Lottery,” I thought to myself, “that sounds nice.”
Like maybe it was about some forgetful old dotterer. He wins the lottery on a forgotten ticket. His white-haired wife finds it in his tweed pants pocket after his funeral. After he heart attacks out on their kitchen floor. After she confronts him for left-handed honeymooning with the neighbor.
Well, no, not that.
But something nice.
Maybe about people who win the lottery after years and decades of struggle. After all their sisters and friends pop out miniature farm hands like cord wood while the wife remains barren. After these good people can’t even hire a field hand because the husband drinks away all their money. After the wife’s hands crack so badly from the field work and the wheat that even the stinky Bag Balm that she uses on their milking cow’s chapped udders doesn’t help. After the husband won’t even touch the wife because of the smell.
Well, no, not that.
But something nice.
Something other than stoning your own friends while I’m eating my scone and John is worrying his handsome blond head about whether or not Truman will lose in November.
Stoning. You know, that’s pretty twisted, Ms. Jackson. Who would concoct such an idea? Who would agree to the box knowing they would smash in one of their neighbors’ heads at the end?
Stoning. I wouldn’t even want to stone Colleen who purposely sends her repellent corgi under our fence to pee on my cabbages. Do you know what dog ammonia does to prize cabbages? Do you know what pee cabbage tastes like? Colleen won at the fair last year, but her ribbon should have gone to that heinous little rat.
Stoning. Who would want to stone their fellow man? What kind of person wants to feel the rough heft of a rock as it leaves their palm, to launch it at another person’s body, to fast-ball more and harder until the flesh crushes and the only identifiable bits left are yellow hair streaked with red?
Stoning. Well, Sylvia might not be opposed to stoning Colleen. Colleen’s trysts with Sylvia’s good-for-nothing have been about as stealthy as her corgi’s night forays. It’s too bad Sylvia’s husband looks so much like Colleen’s, both dark-haired and on the squatty side, not like my beautiful, tall John. If Colleen drew the dot, we wouldn’t all have to wonder whose baby she’ll pop out next month.
Stoning. How would you convince, for example, Colleen that the box makes sense?Maybe her baby will be long-limbed and blond like her last one, like she is, and no reason for Sylvia to be upset.
Even though Colleen is an utter b-word from New York City, Sylvia and I and the other women, we all try so hard to show the Lord Baby Jesus’s kindness and grace to her, to turn our other cheeks. Who in our tight little community would she hope to leave in the street for the buzzards to pull out their entrails and the flies to lay their eggs in?
Anyway, I am so disgusted with your completely un-Christ-like, sacrilegious story and disappointed with the New Yorker overall. May your neighbors do to you as you have written.
— Mary Hipswitch, Fidelity, Missouri
P. S. I suppose the box wouldn’t absolutely need to be black.
Why does this exist? (a stuffy artist statement)
A few months ago a writing workshop that I’m in did these for a group writing prompt and then read them at a local bar. Fun night!
And now, an Irish blessing because I like those:
You’ve got to do your own growing,
No matter how tall your grandfather was.
I post on Friday mornings
Just so you know what to expect. I may also post at other times, but for sure on Friday mornings (6:00am PST delivery so we can sip coffee together and celebrate another week done). See you then!
About Rachel
Working on a scifi book series about a girl who just wants to heal her father from his terminal illness but inadvertently sparks an intergalactic incident instead.
