Decameron Redux

Week Five (Tuesday, 2/16/21 – Monday, 2/22/21)

Fortune again offers you the chance to take home some riches. 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).

The Decameron, in its 100 diverse and often contradictory tales, represents a multiplicity of views on magic, resurrection, and the afterlife. In the eighth story of the fifth day, Nastagio degli Onesti encounters a horrific, Dantean scene in a forest outside the city of Ravenna: a hunter on horseback pursuing a naked young woman with his sword, while hungry mastiffs wait to devour her body. When Nastagio tries to save the young woman, he learns that both hunter and hunted are dead and doomed to repeat this torture every Friday night to pay for their earthly sins: her rejection of his courtship and his desperate suicide. Nastagio is shocked by the scene but arranges for a Friday feast at that very spot in the woods in order to terrify a nobleman’s daughter into accepting his marriage proposal.

In the tenth story of the seventh day, Tingoccio and Meuccio, two Sienese friends, fall in love with the same married woman, who happens to be the mother of Tingoccio’s godchild. Tingoccio’s lust gets the better of him, and he dies from overexertion while conducting a high-interval affair with the lady. Tingoccio, in death, remembers a pact he made with Meuccio that whichever friend died first would return to give his friend an account of the afterlife. He appears to Meuccio on the third night after his death to explain that, while it’s true he is being punished for his sins, “there’s nothing special down here about the mother of a godchild.” Meuccio laughs as the apparition of his friend disappears, resolving to be much more adventurous before his time runs out.

For this week’s riches and renown, give us a glimpse of what might wait for us on the other side. Is your vision of the next world comic, tragic, or both? How does your story of an encounter beyond death instruct us to spend our time on earth?

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.