The White Balloon

(Prompt: write a story about balloons and include the line: "Get your hand out of my pocket")

From the lookout point the balloons looked like they could be maracas in the wind. The girl shut one eye and reached out to shake them with her hands, but grasping none, she said:
“How far do you suppose they are?”
“The balloons?” said the man. “Oh, I don’t know. Far enough.”
The man had a picnic basket and a dime-store bottle of wine. He had five more bottles in the backseat of the car. He thought if they drank enough she wouldn’t know how bad they were.
“Oh, I love that stuff,” said the girl, reaching for the wine.
The man choked and thought the wine tasted like three-day old apple strudel melted in grape juice. It had a soft minty burn like cough medicine, which he didn’t much care for. But as the girl gulped the wine she made sounds like the sound of a sinking ship.
Glub, glub, glub, went the girl.
“Is something wrong?” said the man.
“Nothing,” said the girl.
“It’s never nothing,” said the man.
The girl rolled her eyes and offered him a cigarette. When he shook his head she held one out between her teeth. The man lit a match for her and watched her gently puff smoke. Her cheeks were lovely and hollow like a porcelain bowl. He wanted very much to say something just then but lost the words.
“I made you sandwiches,” he said instead.
“Whatever,” said the girl.
They sat and ate sandwiches in silence and watched the balloons, she in her white dress and he in his dark suit. The balloons floated above them with all the care of careless children. There was a white balloon higher than the rest. In her mind she could see it pop. The white balloon was like her love, buoyed by his bullshit. It could only get so high before he ran out of hot air and lies. Was it always hot air and lies? She was so innocent.
“What did you do with the money?” said the girl.
“What money?” said the man.
“Our money,” said the girl. “Two paychecks worth.”
“I can explain,” said the man.
“Don’t bother,” said the girl. “I want to go home now.”
“Wait, I can explain.”
“Give me the keys,” said the girl. “You can rot here if you like. You can rot here with your pissy wine for all I care.”
The man was so nervous he was sweating down the chin. “Have you gone mad?” he said. “Get your hands out of my pocket!”
She kneed him where it hurt. And then she kneed him again where it didn’t hurt as much but probably still hurt. The girl pried something loose that was not keys. It was a little blue box that popped open.
There was a couple paychecks worth of diamond ring in the box.
“Oh, oops,” said the girl.
“Sorry about the wine,” groaned the man. “I’m really broke right now.”
“I love you,” said the girl.
They sat and ate sandwiches in silence and watched the balloons, she in her white dress and he in his torn suit. There was a white balloon higher than the rest. In her mind the white balloon soared. And how it did soar. The white balloon was her love.

Trust, as told by Patty Sommers, Bonnyville High gossip

(Topic: write a 500-word story about "Trust", and include the following sentence: "She had her suitcase with her.")

Jenny liked Jimmy but not enough to trust him. Jimmy loved Cassie in her low-rise denim, but not enough to remember her last name. Cassie hated Chip because he mistook the backseat of Tiffany’s Rio for algebra class, where he then mistook Amber Jenkins’s gap-tooth grin for a lollipop because they were totally sucking face when Cassie caught them. Now Cassie couldn’t trust Chip anymore because he’s a lying dirt-bag sonuvabitch with three strikes: one for cheating on her, one for cheating on her best friend, and one for cheating on them both with her best friend’s friend. It was sooo over between them, and I mean all of them.

Chip’s only mistake was to like Amber Jenkins enough to trust her. But you can’t trust a girl to keep a secret about anything more than six inches and less than three. Amiright? Amiright? Yeah, I’m right.

Amber Jenkins liked Chip but her real love was Johnny, and she told him so in a Valentine’s card. Well that’s sweet and all, but Valentine’s is just a jackass holiday for smug, overdeveloped girls and their candy grams. And Tobey, did all our flirtatious texting in Brit Lit not amount to a single candy gram? I hope Cupid shoots you with an arrow lined with lead. You have got the backbone of a sea cucumber, gah!

Also, Valentine’s is for guilty people like Cheryl Booker’s dad, who bought his wife diamonds this year because he hooked up with a girl at the coffee shop. By the way, the coffee there sucks and it’s always closed before nine because the girl’s too busy banging some more guilt into Cheryl’s dad.

You’d think they’d be even-steven since everyone’s getting a little something-something on the side, but there’s that thing called trust and Cheryl’s mom lost it. They found her at the cable airport with tickets to Savannah, Georgia. She had her suitcase with her and everything. Cheryl’s dad offered her a Porsche to stay but she said no. He offered her the Hamptons boat house and she said no. He offered her a sizable chunk of the trust fund and she said she’d think about it. Goes to show you can’t buy trust but you can sure buy forgiveness.

So, in conclusion: finding someone you can trust is like winning the lotto, except I’d rather have the lotto, with annuity payments of course, not the lump sum (like, duh). Because the lotto is going to be there when I wake up in the morning, and the lotto is going to be there when I’m old with droopy tits. I.E. I’m not going to lose the lotto to Jenny Henderson’s awesome rack, that Jimmy and Tobey like to stare at so much. Tobey’s says I’m just lime-green jealous because I have trust issues but that’s really just trust in a nutshell. Eyes above the neck, Tobey!

You know you love me! xoxo, Patty Sommers.

Scream

(Topic: write a 500-word story about a scream and include the following sentence: "they walk away without a word".)

Cheryl Booker, junior cheer captain of the Bonnyville high Snapping Turtles, was having a totally fab day until Cassie Thomas ruined it for her. So get this, okay? Cassie, her unpopular neighbor, warns Cheryl that the football team’s secret make-out place atop Shady Hallow is actually a forbidden Indian burial ground, which sucks because Cheryl’s been throwing awesome keggers up there all year. Cheryl thinks Cassie’s just jealous because Cassie’s a smartie and puberty has not been kind to her. That is, until Rick, the red-head rebel in the varsity jacket, drives up at sunset and they dig up, get this, a freaking skull. Like, whoa, yeah.

On the way back, Naomi, who is easily aroused by mounting suspense, is feeling up Rick while he’s driving and they run over a man in a trench-coat and hockey mask. They stop and check the road and there was, I swear to god, nothing.

Now Naomi is dead, killed by some guy with a hook (Yah, a hook. Like no way, right?), and ditto for Gabriela, the hot exchange student. The boys are mysteriously hacked into cubes the size of a good filet mignon. Cheryl knows this, but decides it’s good time for a steamy shower anyway. So she’s wearing a towel and she’s like “doo-doo-doo” putting on her scented oils when she hears this scream.

She’s like, “oh no!”

Cheryl runs back to her room to find a bloody boot print through her teddy bear, Mike-aroni, and that makes her sad because Mike Tiegs gave it to her and Mike is awesome because he’s like first-team varsity and has got abs like yo momma’s washboard, but Cheryl doesn’t know he’s dead until she trips over his decapitated body in the living room.

“Ewww, gross!” cries Cheryl.

Now this crazy motherfucker with an axe bursts out of the closet and Cheryl is bouncing along in her towel and screaming up a storm. She nearly wardrobe malfunctions and finally stumbles outside in the snow. Doom looming over her, Cheryl screams, “Don’t kill me, kill Cassie, the nerdy bitch next door!” But the phantom steadfastly raises his axe and Cheryl Booker screams one last time.

The next morning, Cassie and her chess club friends investigate the unsightly mound in the snow and there is nothing discernable but a bloody towel and blonde hair. They walk away without a word. Cassie knows an ancient curse has befallen the Bonnyville Snapping Turtles, just their parents happen to be out of town.

Shucks.

Cassie goes to the tool shed, where she converts a leaf blower into a make-shift shotgun and fashions some frag bombs from home made soap. Nerdy bitch or not, she’s damn glad that she’s watched so much MacGuyver that any axe-wielding psychopath that walks through her door is gonna eat shit.

Then she puts on some camo make-up and lets loose a scream, not of desperation, but of primal ferocity (like Rambo). Cheer captains might always scream and die to axe murderers, but let it be said that Cassidy-Rey Thomas ain’t no cheer captain.

She said what?

The man sat for a while at the bar with a girl who might be his girlfriend. Then he said to her:
“A gal I knew once had a shirt that said, waiting for the right guy while having fun with all the wrong ones. So I asked her if I was the wrong guy and she said no. I asked her if I was the right guy and she said no. I asked her what kind of guy I was and you know what she said?”
“I dunno,” said the girl. “What did she say?”
“She said, I dunno, are you having fun?”
“And what did you say?”
“I forget what I said. But what do you say to a thing like that?”
The girl said nothing but drew her cigarette from her lips. The brown filter was pink from all the lipstick. “I don’t know what I’d say,” she said quietly.
“Well, let’s get outta here then, what do you say?” said the man.
“Outta here?”
“Yes, that’s what I said. Outta here.”
“Like back to your place?”
“If that’s what you’d like.”
“Well, I don’t want to go back to your place,” said the girl. “It smells like soup.”
“Don’t be silly. The soup’s not from my place. It’s from the place behind my place.”
“Well, that’s almost just the same, isn’t it?”
For a moment the man said nothing. He just stood there contemplating the smell of the soup from the place behind his place. He had eaten there often and it was much better than the soup the girl had brought him for when he had the flu. He didn’t say a thing about that now. Instead he said: “I don’t smell like the soup though, do I?”
“No, you don’t smell like soup,” said the girl.
“Thank god,” said the man. “Now let’s go to your place.”