Grau Del Grau
Instructions
Stand near a busy corner in the city. Carry a sign which reads: “Take my picture.”
Wait for your picture to be taken.
Travel to the nearest suburb. Stand in the park. Repeat Step 2.
Bring your sign to a farm, a port, etc. Move further and further from people.
Travel through the wilderness: plains, desert, steppes, tundra. Stand in the widest field you find and wait.
Invite a close friend to dinner.
Give them directions to some place that is not your home.
Before they arrive, dress this location for dinner: table and settings, good lighting, flowers (if they like flowers).
At home, set your own dining table in the same way. Leave an empty seat across from yours. Prepare the same meal.
Sit down to dinner at the same time. Eat separately.
Visit the Sistine Chapel. Pay attention to the ceiling.
When you return home, draw from memory the same artwork on the ceiling of your bedroom. Draw with your bad hand.
Repeat with other famous works of religious art. Try additional techniques that might curtail your ability to draw (drawing blindfolded, tie one hand behind your back, use a pen that is unusually long, use one big crayon, etc.).
When your home is full of new works of art, open it to the public. Call your house a museum. Ask for donations.
With a thin knife, cut your face along its edges (jawline, hairline, eyelids) so that it can be removed like a mask.
Ask a friend to write a secret message to you along the inside.
Sew your face back on. Guess the hidden message.
Build a house that grows larger or smaller depending on how many people are inside.
Once it has been built, invite about ten friends over to celebrate. For a party game, have everyone measure the size of the house. Provide refreshments.
Throw another party the following day. Ask the guests to invite their own friends, too.
Measure how the house has grown, or how much it shrinks when someone leaves.
On each day after, host a party. Always encourage your guests to bring new people.
Let the party go until most of the people inside the house are strangers to you. Leave. Pack a tent.
Set up camp on the hill above the house. Watch as your house continues to grow and contract. Don’t return until it is once again the size you started with.
If you feel tempted:
Place the thing you are tempted by on the floor. Cover the windows, turn out any lights.
Lie face down, with your mouth open. Wait for the creature inside you to crawl out and grab the tempting object.
Quickly exit the room and lock the creature inside. It should die on its own time.
If you need to reenter the room before the creature has died, be sure to keep your openings covered—it may try to climb back in.
Be patient: it will take time for your body to shrink back down to the size you were before. (If more than forty-eight hours pass and your body has not become smaller, see index: “Getting Rid of Excess Skin.”)
If there is too much poison in your body:
Spit it out.
Continue until you have run out of spit.
If you are still poisoned, scream and shout to release any verbal toxins.
If this does not solve your problem, lay outside with your mouth stretched open until the poison crawls out of you.
Make sure to collect everything you’ve expelled (spit, words, noise) and gather it in a secure jar.
Give this to someone you trust. Ask them to hide it in a place you’re unfamiliar with.
Choose your true name.
Don’t pick a name you’ve already been given or have used before
Don’t share this name with other people. Never introduce yourself with it, and do not apply it as a pseudonym or to otherwise conceal your identity.
You may change your other names, but your true name must stay the same.
If another person learns your real name or attempts to call you with it, do not respond. Your name is not for them to use.
Tally every illness you have had (ex. ulcers, manic depression, hay fever).
Adopt an equal amount of mice, birds, plants, or other small living creatures.
Name each of them after one of your ailments.
Raise your adoptees from infancy to old age, or until you are no longer able to care for them.
If you have lost all feeling:
Pick a flower from someone else’s garden. Eat it with a fork and knife while its owner watches you.
Climb naked up a mountain. When you reach the top, get dressed.
Fire your gun into a lake until you run out of ammunition.
Build a ladder tall enough to reach through the atmosphere.
If feeling does not come, try again tomorrow.
Grau Del Grau has lived next to two oceans. Their work has appeared in JK Zine.