Day: April 23, 2024

MFFFC — The Precocious Child

Fandango7 Comments

For Mai Ling’s fifth birthday, she received a paint set. Her parents made it clear that she should paint only on the paper provided with the paint set. “Mai Ling,” her father said, “you mustn’t paint on the walls or the floor. Do you understand Mai Ling?” Mai Ling nodded demurely.

It didn’t take long for Mai Ling to go through the entire pad of painting paper that came with the paint set. She asked her father to bring home another pad of painting paper, but he was a busy man and hadn’t gotten around to it. Mai tried to be patient and wait for her father to bring home more painting paper, but when you are a precocious five-year-old, patience was too lofty of a goal.

Mai Ling walked around her home looking for something perfect for her masterpiece, and she found the white wall in the family room to meet her criteria. Her mother was busy in the kitchen preparing dinner and her father was still at work and wouldnt be home for a few more hours. So Mai lined up her paints on the floor, being careful not to drip any on the hardwood, and started painting the plain white wall in the family room.

A few hours later, Mai’s mother came out of the kitchen to see what her precocious little girl was up to and saw that she had painted most of the lower half of the family room’s wall. Her mother was livid and sent Mai Ling to her room. When her father came home from work, Mai Ling’s mother met him at the door. He was carrying with him a new pad of painting paper. His wife grabbed him and led him into the family room and Mai Ling’s father gasped. “Go get her and bring her here,” he barked at his wife.

Mai’s mother marched her daughter from her bedroom to the family room and to say that Mai was scared of what her father would do to her would be an understatement. Her father stood silently staring at the wall for several minutes. Mai was literally shaking when she faw her father glaring at her. “May Ling, I want you to sit down on the floor in front of that wall you painted,” he said. Mai Ling dutifully did what her father said. He had never laid a hand on her in anger, but she feared, having blatantly disobeyed him, that is what he would do this time.

But both Mai Ling and her mother were surprised by what Mai Ling’s father did next. He took out his iPhone and stated taking photos of the painting Mai Ling had just painted on the wall. “Remarkable use of colors. Creatively blended. The variation of the brush strokes,” he muttered.

Then he directed Mai Ling to sit on the floor with a brush in hand and took her photo with her painting in the background. He looked at his wife. “One of my clients is an art critic. He says he is always on the lookout for bright young talent. I’m going to show him these photos.”

Then he reached down to Mai Ling and hugged her. “I think we may have an art prodigy living in our house.”

Written for Melissa’s Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge. Image credit: Anastasia Shuraeva at Pexels.

Fandango’s Story Starter #146

Fandango8 Comments

It’s time for my weekly Story Starter prompt. Here’s how it works. Every Tuesday morning (my time), I’m going to give you a “teaser” sentence or sentence fragment and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to build a story (prose or poetry) around that sentence/fragment. It doesn’t have to be the first sentence in your story, and you don’t even have to use it in your post at all if you don’t want to. The purpose of the teaser is simply to spark your imagination and to get your storytelling juices flowing.

This week’s Story Starter teaser is:

As much as Tim had tried to ignore it, he couldn’t deny it any longer.

If you care to write and post a story built from this teaser, be sure to link back to this post and tag your post with #FSS. I would also encourage you to read and enjoy what your fellow bloggers do with their stories.

And most of all, have fun.

A2Z Challenge — The Letter T

Fandango14 Comments

I am unofficially participating in this year’s A to Z Challenge. My theme this year is girlfriends.

T is for Tina B.

Tina was a little bit of a slut. She always form-fitting clothes that accentuated her hourglass figure and she had a reputation for flirting with the male teachers, although I can’t say with confidence that any actually succumbed to her abundant charms.

Anyway, Tina was a junior and I was a senior. About three weeks before senior prom, a girl I’d been dating for a few months dumped me, and I suddenly found myself in need of a prom date. The school rumor mill had it that Tina was trying to find a senior who would take her to the prom. So I called her and asked her if she would like to go to the prom with me and she said yes, she would.

I don’t know what was going on inside my head, but I didn’t spend any time with her before senior prom. She was really not my type and basically she was just a filler. My two best friends (the same ones who worked at the soda fountain where I met Quinn, the girl I lost my virginity to) had suggested we go to the prom and afterward drive to Ocean City, spend the night there with our dates, spend the day on the beach, and then drive back the next night. I explained the plan to Tina and she was all for it.

Prom night arrived. I had on my best suit (possibly my only suit, actually), and Tina wore a dress that made her look like Jessica Rabbit!

She also had an overnight bag with casual clothes to change into after prom and her bathing suit.

Prom was nice and all, but I was looking forward to what would come next. After prom, we went over to my buddy’s house and everyone changed for the three-hour drive to Ocean City. We got there at around 4 am and went out onto the beach, spread our blankets out, leaving about 15 yards between blankets for “privacy.”

Within a few minutes, my two best friends were at it hot and heavy with their respective girls, but while Tina and I made out, she said she didn’t feel comfortable making love so close to the other two couples and I was too tired to push her, so we fell asleep in each others arms.

The next day we used public restrooms to wash up and change into our swimwear. We left the beach at around three, stopped at a restaurant for dinner, and got back to our local stomping grounds by around 8:00 that night. I drove Tina home, went inside, and she asked me if I’d like to stay for a while. Her mother, who was divorced, wasn’t home, and Tina went upstairs to “slip into something more comfortable.”

Ten minutes later I heard Tina call my name so I walked to the bottom of the stairs, looked up, and saw Tina standing at the landing on the second floor wearing a robe. Suddenly she opened her robe and then let it drop to the floor. Seeing her naked body, I ran up the steps and followed her into her bedroom. Within a matter of minutes, we were passionately making love.

Then someone pushed open her bedroom door and shouted, “Christina!” Christina was her real name but she went by Tina. Then, not having time to react and pull out of Tina, I felt these powerful arms literally pulling me up and off and out of Tina and throwing me on the floor. Tina’s mother was a large woman and she was in a rage.

I tried to grab my clothes, but Tina’s mother was pushing me out of the bedroom toward the stairs. I was afraid she was going to throw me down the stairs, so I got my balance and ran down the stairs. When I reached the landing, Tina’s mother had thrown down my shirt, pants, and shoes. Then, at the top of her lungs, she screamed, “Get out of my house.” I did.

Previous 2024 A2Z posts: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S

FOWC with Fandango — Sneeze

Fandango14 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “sneeze.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, ÿplease manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.