Decameron Redux

Week Six (Tuesday, 2/23/21 – Monday, 3/1/21)

Treasure chests keep materializing on our shores. Four randomly selected submissions will receive a $25 gift card from The Seminary Co-op, Bookshop.org, Build Coffee, or Plein Air Café (your choice).

A pair of pranksters emerges in the Decameron’s final days: the riotous Bruno and Buffalmacco, who team up to humiliate and befuddle their most feckless neighbors. They convince an egotistical doctor of a secret society whose initiation ritual requires he enter a graveyard and ride on the back of a terrifying beast (Buffalmacco in disguise) only to be dumped in a drainage ditch for showing signs of fear. In four slapstick stories, Bruno and Buffalmacco convince their neighbor Calandrino that a magic stone has turned him invisible, that he is the culprit who has stolen his own pig, that a magic scroll will make a young woman love him, and even that his wife has gotten him pregnant. The ten Florentines who serve as the narrators and audience of the Decameron’s hundred stories muse on the instructive qualities and cautionary valances of these stories, but their clearest and most immediate purpose is laughter.

This week, the challenge is simple: make us laugh. You may find inspiration in the hijinks of Bruno and Buffalmacco, or in the story of the strict abbess who, dressing in the dark, dons her lover’s trousers instead of her veil, or in the story of a disheveled judge who gets publicly pantsed by a group of troublemakers, or in the many unreal escapades of our real life.

Remember: this site is dedicated to storytelling, but you needn’t limit yourself to the traditional prose narrative. We welcome photo series, videos, music and other audio work, visual stories, poetry, and anything else in standard shareable formats. The target length for a narrative submission is 200-1000 words. For other formats, consider what it means to present a bite-sized portion of your art, something that takes only a few minutes of your audience’s precious time. Head over to the Submit page when you’re ready to upload your contribution.