Yep, that’s write.

I really wanted to take some time this week to have fun with writing a little, like with a prompt or something. However, I don’t currently have my big book of prompts on-hand, and I feel like all the writing prompts I come across online (other than on Reddit), honestly, kind of suck. Like… “write about your favorite animal!”… seriously?

So, I came up with an inventive solution! I’ll just use one of my own amazingly clever writing prompts!

Because, hey, someone’s gotta use ’em…

But, anyway, here’s the prompt I chose to use today; it came from my post of “New writin’ prompts for y’all!!!” back in… holy cow—2018.

“How many times are we going to have to bury this girl?”

(Dialogue prompt, apparently by me, 2018)

So, let’s see how far I can take this thing…

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“How many times are we going to have to bury this girl?”

Trina looked up at Trent.

“Well, you know, if you would have given her Captain Crunch instead of Cocoa Puffs…” she started, hands on the hips of her jeans.

“Oh, shut up,” her brother snapped as he piled the last shovelful of soil on top of the mound in between them. “Now, where did you put those roller blades?”

Trina glared at him through the dark and popped a bubble with her gum.

“Um, I think they were… up your ass and to the left?”

“Not the time, Trina,” Trent growled, lunging for the black bowling bag by her feet. He then ripped its zipper back, yanked out a pair of child-sized roller skates, and stepped back, pausing to hold a hand out to Trina’s chin. “Gum, now, please.”

She popped one more pink bubble, then dropped her jaw and pushed a hunk of Juicy Fruit onto his hand with her tongue.

“At least you’re helpful for one thing,” he grumbled, now taking the gum chunk and pressing it in between all of the wheels on the skates. After that, he dropped down to his knees, picked up one tiny foot that stuck out from the side of the dirt hill, shoved one roller skate onto it, but then struggled a bit to get the left skate onto the partially buried left foot.

“You need a hand with that?” Trina asked.

“No,” Trent spat, right before a child’s hand burst up from the dirt under his nose.

He immediately screamed out and jumped up; his sister keeled over in laughter. After that, he snatched the shovel back up and, somewhat carefully, pushed the hand down under the dirt.

“Well,” he picked back up, stepping back. “Do you think the skates will slow her down this time?”

“No,” Trina replied. “But it will keep her from rolling around in her grave.” Just then, though, the mound of fresh soil began to ripple from underneath. “Or not.”

“Damn, again!” Trent yelled, right before the dirt-caked face and shoulders of a little girl emerged from it, sandy chunks falling from her dark hair in the process. And then, after she had risen from the waist up, and her dirty white tee shirt revealed its “I’m purr-fect!” cat graphic design, her reddened eyes creaked open.

“Found you guys!” she suddenly cheered.

“Oh, yep, ya did,” Trina commented, nodding, and then looking over at Trent; he bit his bottom lip and widened his eyes.

“Now you count and I’ll hide!” the little girl continued, shooting a pointer finger up at him.

He nodded.

“Right, right, okay,” he said, then turned back to his sister… well, his other sister. “Trina, you wanna help her hide, now?”

Trina crossed her arms.

“Not really.”

“Oh, come on, sis!” the young girl yelled, now jumping up and out of the ground, and, though she stumbled on her new roller skates at first, she caught herself and walked as if they were normal sneakers after a moment.

“Well, we sure gummed up the works, there, didn’t we?” Trina said.

“Mom and dad are going to kill us…” Trent mumbled as the little girl, barely three feet tall on the frozen wheels, waddled over to the other two.

“Not unless we kill her, first,” Trina remarked. “Oh, wait, that’s right, we can’t.”

“I know, I’m killing it at hide and seek!” the girl shouted, then surged forward, grabbed Trina’s hand, and began to rush with her through a patch of trees.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Trent urged out, grabbing Trina’s other arm and pulling the two back. “Maybe we should just tell her…”

“Tell her what?” Trina asked. “That’s she’s an experimental, indestructible clone of our little sister that we created on accident while babysitting her? Four year olds are pretty used to being apart of advanced scientific discoveries…”

“No, no, no,” Trent replied, letting Trina go, who in turn let go of the younger girl, who in turn turned around in circles while humming to herself. “I meant… maybe we should lie to her and say… maybe our parents died, and she needs to go to the orphanage without us.”

“Really? Because I feel like the clone thing is what sounds more like a lie.”

“If you just say the secret word, I’ll go away,” the little girl piped in, suddenly butting her head in between the two other siblings.

Trina and Trent exchanged glances.

“What’s the… secret word?” Trent asked.

“That,” the girl answered. ” ‘The… secret… word‘!”

“Okay, well,” Trina started, leaning back and looking down at her. “He literally just said it, so… go.” She made shooing gestures.

“Trina!” Trent scolded.

But, just then, the little girl shouted, ‘okay!’, turned around, and sprinted off through the woods. And, somehow, in the process, her entire body actually slowly turned into wood shavings, the wind whipping her dust back back at the others’ faces… until she physically disappeared into thin air.

Trent and Trina stared, wide-eyed and jaw-dropped.

“Well, that takes care of that,” Trina commented, wiping her palms against each other. “Now we just gotta say that to the other five-hundred and eighty-eight of them…

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Well, that was it, guys! A little… actually pretty weird… and generally short, but, hey, I had fun with it, at least.

Let me know what you thought/think!

–Kari