I wrote “The Cut-Rate Wormhole” because I actually bought not one but two ridiculous medieval churls’ heads in a thrift shop years ago, one for my old college roommate and one for me. She and I had shared many odd escapades as English lit majors at an isolated women’s college in Massachusetts and the little heads struck me as highly amusing. As I recall, hers was picking his nose, while mine was extending his tongue with a hand beneath his chin as if to catch his vomit. We’d formed what we liked to think of as a guerrilla theatre troop to do tiny parodies of Shakespeare with clever sight gags such as using hard-boiled eggs to simulate the gouging out of eyes by popping out the yolks. Years later, when we were sober matrons, the impish instinct still lived within us and came out on special occasions as silly gifts. Now, the truth of the matter is that the little head I kept for myself actually did some astonishingly revolting things. I’d hung it on my gardening shed where it collected, well, the story pretty much covers that aspect.
I’ve been a professional writer for many years and have never been able to choose among fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama so I do them all. My eye doctor once mildly suggested that I might have become a household name had I concentrated on one discipline, like writing a best seller, whatever that is. Instead, I also spent a good many years as an artisan working in gilt to create classical bas reliefs on wood and glass, and have enjoyed all the muses that have been kind enough to visit me. For a person who began her writing career on a typewriter, the internet has been a total source of awe and joy. It enables me to share my own work with creative voices from all over the planet in adventurous projects such as TALL TALES & SHORT STORIES. I’m grateful that I get to be surprised and motivated every day.
‘The Cut-Rate Wormhole’ by Nancy Brewka-Clark features in Tall Tales & Short Stories Volume One.
