Cardboard Box: A Short Story

I stand and stare in disbelief as the car’s bonnet is crumpled into the bulky metal pole on the side of the road. My limbs are numb and I am drenched from head to toe. The glistening droplets continuously drip off the tip of my nose as I realize how much trouble I’m going to get into. The wind wails around me as if it’s saying “you’re going to be in so much trouble”. I suddenly get back into the car and attempt to reverse the car so no one will see the car rammed into the power pole. Mum and Dad's pristine new car. Scratched. Dented. Ruined.

There were two choices: mop the kitchen, or dump out two thousand cartons of spoiled macadamia nut milk. Sadly we didn’t get the first choice. The boys decided to mop the kitchen, which they probably didn’t know how to do. We got to work, two girls opening boxes, two more opening cartons, and another girl and myself were emptying the cartons into the sink. It wasn’t really that bad, only a faint smell of something bad, I thought we got the easy job. That is until we kept working. Unloading box after box the smell grew stronger. It smelled worse than a barnyard by the time we reached the bottom rack.

The paperhanger is the most thought provoking short stories we read because William Gay challenges the concept of morality, miracle and the boundary between good and evil. What make paperhanger such a amazing short story is it's beautifully written language and ingenious description of the modern world's malevolence; the story involves the paperhanger, the wife, the little girl, and the doctor as the four main characters. The plot surround these four characters and unfold some intriguing and disturbing theme of the story: morality and destiny.

Ludwig collapsed on his improvised bed next to his brother, exhausted. Gilbert didn’t even look up from cleaning his gun. It was his form of relaxing in the evening, making sure all the parts were in perfect condition.

deserted their mansion. One night, the girl’s mother decided to return to the mansion and look for her daughter. It is here where she encounters the paperhanger once more. During this scene, the mother offers to pay him to drive her into the woods and look for her daughter. He replied, “I wouldn’t charge anybody anything to search for a child’s body. But she’s not in the woods. Nothing could have stayed hidden, the way these woods were searched (165).” By offering to help the child’s mother the paperhanger gains the mother’s trust. To the reader, he appears to be helping the mother during a time of need, making him a decent friend. The paperhanger manipulated the situation, to get the girl’s mother to trust him and consequently leave with him. He knew the child would not be found, not because the woods were extensively searched, but because he remains. The paperhanger was supposed to drive the child’s mother to the woods, but instead drives her to a cemetery. After noticing that some of the graves had been dismantled and robbed, she tells the paperhanger. He responded by saying, “You can’t rob the dead. They have nothing left to steal (167).” The woman was shocked by his response and then asked him if he had robbed the graves. He responded by saying, “The line between grave robbing and archeology has always looked a little blurry to me. I was studying their culture trying to get a fix on what their lives were like (168).” This is the turning place in the story, where the

In addition, the second guideline to be labeled as quest is to consist of a place to go. Of course Lily wants to escape her abusive father and his harsh torment. But more importantly, she wants to learn more about her mother, getting no help from her father who refuses to speak on the subject. She was so young when her mom died that the only connection she has to her is a box of her old things, one of the items in the box being a picture of the black Virgin Mary with “Tiburon, South Carolina” on the back. Namely, Lily becomes interested in going there because she wants to find out more about her other. Although she does travel to Tiburon, she is more specifically looking for August Boatwright’s house. She is the woman who created the picture

Matthew pulls Gilbert through the door to his room, slamming it behind him. He begins to pace around his room fiercely, stomping and swearing in French every few seconds before finally exploding.

A long time ago, a clouded leopard, named Gilbert, wanted to take a trip all by himself. He figured he was old enough to go alone. Although he didn’t want to take just any old trip like all the other clouded leopards, he wanted to go to the sky! Gilbert started to search for the tallest tree he could find. Once he found it, he climbed all the way up to the tippy top. He then stretched his paw as far as he could to reach for the clouds. He pulled himself up through the cloud. He was finally in the sky!

"Hart Street..." Gilbert thought out loud staring at the television. People were hurrying out onto the street from the convenience store.

My three-day weekend was packed. On Friday after my cross country practice my family went to a restaurant called Copper Kettle I got some real tasty wings and a fish taco which was amazing.

Moonlight came off the pool casting its aqueous luminescence onto the domed ceilings. There was the echoing of splashes and the low murmur of distant conversations; each one held within their own little bubble seemingly ignorant of the others, each one sharing a secret passed through a whisper. Sansa shared hers' without saying a word.

Over the next few weeks, Gilbert continued to track down sources. Many of them, including the Barbees, remained convinced that Willingham was guilty, but several of his friends and relatives had doubts. So did some people in law enforcement. Willingham’s former probation officer in Oklahoma, Polly Goodin, recently told me that Willingham had never demonstrated bizarre or sociopathic behavior. “He was probably one of my favorite kids,” she said. Even a former judge named Bebe Bridges—who had often stood, as she put it, on the “opposite side” of Willingham in the legal system, and who had sent him to jail for stealing—told me that she could not imagine him killing his children. “He was polite, and he seemed to care,” she said. “His convictions had been for dumb-kid stuff. Even the things stolen weren’t significant.” Several months before the fire, Willingham tracked Goodin down at her office, and proudly showed her photographs of Stacy and the kids. “He wanted Bebe and me to know he’d been doing good,” Goodin recalled.

How could there possibly be this many books on babies? On kids? Gilbert’s mom was MIA for most of his life, and he turned out alright. But, there was an entire row of books on childcare, and Gilbert had no idea which one to pick out.

The tree swayed against the cool night breeze giving off an eerie feel. Gilbert continued to walk, the sounds of the city died away and in it's place were the murmurs of the leaves. The soft crunching sound of fallen autumn leaves from under his feet grew louder and louder, he proceeds to go on until he arrived at the park. The metal creaked in the background, he sees the rusty swing sets and slanted slide. Further he wanders into the park, only his own breath was audible gnawing on his nails, sweat trickled down his face. A stench consumed the air, a blinding mixture of deification and sweat. He saw a man very thin and has a lot of wrinkles, his clothes were buried in filth, blood vessels standing out, larger knuckles a pinkish discolouration of his skin that look old and tired but soft he had narrow hooded eyes and bushy eyebrows brows. He slouched on the bench mumbling words under his breath.

My name is Mark one day I was racing. When I got done their was this bald guy with head phones on. His name was Baled Jerry. He told we that their was a bomb buried on the track. So we found out it was buried under a bunch of white stuff that looks like snow. So since we were on a racing track we did not have any shovels to dig it up so we had to use pieces of white card board. While my crew and I were digging it up Baled Jerry was just watching us dig it up and bossed us around. It took us 15 days to dig the bomb up because we had to take a lot of breaks and get some food or water for Baled Jerry. But when we were done digging it up Balled Jerry had to take it to the police station. So when he were on his way to the police station the