A Wild Cry: A Junior Narrative Illustration by Tyler Buhr (2018)

My flash fiction is a story about an eighteen-year-old kid named Drew who has lived in a foster home his whole life. He has never been the social type and has lived most of his life in solitaire. After he never found himself a family, Drew became self-conscious and realized no one would ever want him. This motivated him to create a life of his own, escaping the foster home and living in the nearby woods. Once there, he is overwhelmed with the responsibilities and challenges of living a life in the woods. When he is faced with the obstacle of finding food, he has to come to a realization that he will have to hunt and kill. After he captures a rabbit through a homemade trap, he is overcome with extreme emotions as he is unable to get himself to kill it.

The character I created is a mixture of three different creatures, a snail, a fox, and a sloth. I started by creating the body of the snail. I chose the snail's body mostly because of the shell as it represents Drew’s antisocial attitude. The physical slug part of the body relates to Drew’s motivation, as snails are able to regenerate new body parts if needed. After finishing the body, I moved onto the sloth head. The sloth represents how Drew is always alone. Sloths are animals that spend most of their lives alone so I thought this would be a perfect fit to how Drew feels. The ears of the creature are fox ears. Just like Sloths, Foxes spend most of their lives solitary as well. I also wanted the ears to represent how Drew was paranoid in the forest and foxes are perfect for this because their sense of hearing is excellent. I wanted the background to represent the forest Drew is now calling home, including the vast amount of trees as well as the stream running through them.