by Lily Barrett and Chiara Pieri
Editor’s Note: This pair of work is part of Follow Your Art Community Studios’ 5th annual Art of Words exhibit. For the exhibit, writer Lily and artist Chiara gave each other a prompt to inspire a new creation. See the prompts and the responses below. The exhibit, which features the work of 28 FYA artists and writers, is on view until November 7, 2025.
Monstrous Boston
by Lily Barrett
by Chiara Pieri
(Prompt)
(Response)
Wonderful. I’m missing the one job interview I’ve scored in months, and the South Station security guard gripping my arm won’t explain why he’s stopped me.
He didn’t smile at my nervous joke — What does King Kong call a train full of passengers? A chew-chew train! — so I’m secretly calling him Grumpy. Despite my anxiety, I really want to pet Grumpy’s dog, but the large German Shepherd has on a bomb sniffer vest.
Grumpy and his dog walk me into the station’s food court, approaching Regina Pizzeria. Does he need a slice? Will he buy me one too? To my surprise, Grumpy enters the kiosk, taking me with him behind the register.
I swallow, glancing around. While it’s crowded, no one else seems to notice us. It’s as if a veil has fallen between us and the throng. I feel invisible. My stomach churns.
Grumpy raps his fingers against the wall, and the tile beneath us starts sinking. I stumble. His grip on my arm tightens. Again, how does no one else notice? A hand covers my mouth before my scream cuts loose.
“Easy,” he tells me, gruff but not unkind.
The floor rises up towards my nose, then past my forehead. As we’re swallowed by darkness, I hear scratching — Rats?! I whimper, then shriek as something wet and rough engulfs my fingers.
The dog. The security guard’s fierce-looking bomb-sniffing dog is licking my fingers.
I blink. We’ve landed in a well-lit, richly furnished lobby. It’s got marble floors, doric columns, and chaise lounges with gold-trimmed cushions. Glass-walled conference rooms line the perimeter.
But that’s not why I’m staring.
The place is full of monsters. In one room sit three gorgeous people — two women, one man — with fangs. In a lounge, a well-groomed man encourages a younger, scared-looking woman as a blue flame shoots up from her palm. A woman with brilliant yellow eyes laughs and smacks the arm of a man with goat’s horns as they walk by the conference rooms.
I shut my eyes. I pinch myself so hard I make myself yelp. Then I open them again.
The Mermaid
by Chiara Pieri
by Lily Barrett
(Prompt)
(Response)
From the tallest rock, the crow watches me, feathers ruffled by the briny Atlantic breeze.
“Good morning, crow,” I chirp, navigating the shore in my shift. Alone for miles,
I never worry about baring my legs.
As childhood playmates, Henry and I fantasized about a house away from society. Where Henry could wear his frocks. Where no one asked why we hadn’t borne children. Getting married quieted the gossips — even if we never were interested in consummation — and we built our home.
But then Henry took to sea on a merchant ship. He sobbed when leaving, but his letters gradually grew happier. His shipmates embrace his preferred fashions! Some men share a bed, and no one blinks! Why, he’s found his most kindred spirits!
His last letter stated, apologetically, that he’d sail another ten fortnights. I didn’t want to dampen his joy, so, with the crow eyeing me, I poured my resentment onto parchment, stuffed it in a bottle, and hurled it into the waves.
The next day, to my surprise, the bottle stood on the dock, the parchment gone. Inside was a frond of dead man’s rope. Intrigued, I pressed the wiry brown algae between book pages before casting the bottle back out.
By dawn, the bottle reappeared, bearing three green clumps. Henry’s tome on ocean vegetation calls it sea cauliflower — and it grows in the distant South Seas.
Since the ocean and I began our mysterious correspondence, I have several pages of seaweeds. I feel less desolate. I have the tide, and the crow. Sometimes I even trick myself into spotting a seal.
I do wish I could talk to someone. But when I open my mouth to converse with the crow, his beak whips back to the horizon. Fine. I kick at the water like a child.
There’s a head among the waves. I blink. It’s coming closer. The crow squawks.
Purple locks undulate on the surface. Four feet away, the being slides slowly out of the water. I first see deep-set eyes, ears curled like seashells. Then curves the color of twilight, and an iridescent tail.
Lily Barrett is a bookseller, novelist, and software engineer based in Boston, MA. She co-owns Read My Lips Boston, a pop-up bookshop focused on diverse romance stories. Alongside celebrating underrepresented authors and main characters — disabled, BIPOC, queer and more — Lily is passionate about writing romance that centers marginalized voices. She is a two-time finalist for the Associates of the Boston Public Library’s Writer-in-Residence fellowship for children’s and young adult writers, and the YA Fiction Mentee for The Word’s 2025 Editor-Writer mentorship program. She is also a writer-in-residence at Follow Your Art Community Studios.
Chiara Pieri is a printmaker and illustrator. She is also the program coordinator and facilitator of many of FYACS’s core art classes. She holds a BFA in Illustration from Mass. College of Art and has been teaching at FYACS since the 416 Main Street days. She’s the studio’s resident expert on drawing unicorns, and loves to sneak UFOs into casual conversation. She hopes to encourage her student’s confidence in their own creativity through skill building, experimentation, and creating a safe place to make mistakes.