Afternoon in a Park

[Rod Drake]

There is a rhinoceros in the park.

It’s just a normal, small-town park in nowheresville, Illinois, with a couple of little league baseball diamonds, some kids’ play equipment and a weathered picnic table or two, and there is an 8000-pound gray rhinoceros standing in the middle of it.  The rhino smells something, and tosses his head about angrily; oh my god, it’s the president of our local bank, Mr. Stafford, walking home for lunch, taking his usual shortcut through the park, and the rhinoceros sees him, is charging him and has hooked him horribly with that fearsome horn on his lowered head.  Blood is everywhere, and Mr. Stafford is tossed aside like a shredded rag doll, because now the rhino is distracted by a group of kids chasing each other around the merry-go-round and laughing.  In a flash, the huge beast, shaking the ground as he runs, changes direction and is at the merry-go-round ramming and trampling little screaming bodies like bugs squashed under a shoe, and it just makes no sense, a deadly rhino on the loose in our quiet park.

Maybe . . . maybe I just imagined the whole thing; I mean, an African rhinoceros running wild in our little park—well, I guess I better get over to the bank to sign those final papers for the foreclosure on my house since I lost my teaching job year last year.

[Mike Handley]

I could've done without the little screaming bodies, too, but the rest kicks ass.

[Robert Morschel]

I think they slipped some rhino horn in your last Chinese takeaway.

It's a pity the animal wasn't in the middle of the bank instead.

[Judy Thompson]

oh, yeah.  How many times can you actually work an 8000 pound rhinoceros into a first line without making it sound  slightly silly?  Rod, you rock. 

[Robert McEvily]

One of the all-time great opening sentences.  I love love love great opening sentences.

[Angela]

Like Gita, I was disturbed by the image of the violent death of children, be it real or imagined, or imagined by an imaginary person.

[Judy Thompson]

I would have liked to see the rhinoceros be real.  One of those, 'but but but it really HAPPENED..." things.  I will say this, that first sentence was a grabber.  Nice job, Rod...

[Rod Drake]

The children represented the school where the narrator lost his job, then his life and maybe his sanity.

[Gita]

Let us say you conjured the rhino with magical thinking because whoops here comes Stafford and he deserves trampling. I'm down with that.
But then, your rhino -- yes yours -- kills a bunch of happy children. What's up with that, dude?

You writer types, you all think you can excuse your  fantasies using the "fiction defense."