Creative Writing

You are taking a creative writing workshop and you have to submit the following assignment:

Imagine you are a university student living in a student hall. Your roommate has suddenly decided to leave. Write a short story describing the events that led up to your roommate’s sudden departure.

Elizabeth, my roommate, literally possesses the same adorable personalities as the character described in Pride and Prejudice, but looks more astonished in 21st century fashion. The first time she portrayed her beauty to the entire hall mates was in the university’s High Table. I was supposed to be her closest acquaintance and she was always tagging along behind me. So clever, playful and glamorous is Elizabeth that she had swiftly become the celebrity of our hall. When freshmen started to do their room visits during orientation, our room ranked high in popularity.

Things began to go wrong with a few love letters through from the gap of our door daily. Elizabeth had been reading them in the first week and gave up soon after the number of them skyrocketed. She was annoyed by the weird greetings of the guys she bumped into and sometimes hostile facial expressions from the girls. I tried to help her (or myself too) by sticking a memo on the door warning people not to put anything through the door. But then it came up a stupid guy trying to tuck a parcel into her pigeon hole. This made Elizabeth pay two hundred dollars to have a key man fixing the problem.

When we talked about the matter really contributing to her sudden departure, I must mention the gross poster on the notice board of our floor. Last week when we finished our dinner in canteen and were walking back to our room, she stopped in front of the board with a desperate look. A guy created a poster putting Elizabeth’s image together with him. More seriously, an arrow was drawn across both of their hearts. ‘Oh, goodness! Does he want to murder me?’ ‘Maybe he wants you to kill him softly’ I teased her with a song name. Then I soon regretted for what I said as she had turned blue since then.

On her birthday, we went to have a nice breakfast before our lectures began. Elizabeth said she was lucky enough to have her birthday packed with lectures and tutorials so she could skip lots of unwanted presents from strangers. I was not so optimistic. Truly! A call from Elizabeth came later while I was in film screening, my favourite time during a week. She was sobbing on the other side of the phone and asked me back to the room.

By the time I arrived the room, she was about to leave with her luggage, giving me a last hug in the hall. She planned to move back to her parents’ home. She didn’t tell me what had happened but catching up with this breaking news is no more than a piece of cake. There was a guy trying to surprise Elizabeth on her birthday by tens of the balloons. He fastened the balloons around his arm and climbed from the window. The ending was not romantic at all as he tripped over and fell to the balcony of the floor below. I guessed the flying balloons had somehow saved him from fractures of bones and he only twisted his ankle. But Elizabeth was summoned by our warden and was scolded for that she should not risk her boyfriend’s life for any romance.

I knew she was innocent but she had been fed up. In order to live an ordinary life, she had better stay with her parents. It is at midnight where I am eating cup noodles and doing some revision. What a peaceful time! That I had never enjoyed over the past three months.