Kagome’s 250 Word Challenge: Responses

Rouge

I stuck a piece of bubble gum under my desk during second period. I didn't think much of it; not much more thought than I'd give frozen peas.

Davy walked into the room the next day and sat in my desk because I wanted to sit next to Amanda that day. Everybody hated him, even the teacher. He was like a girl almost, smelling like vanilla wearing red necklaces like ruby drops of blood. They really ragged on him, telling him to stop being so gay, but he always acted deaf to their comments.

“Davy,” said Ms. Paul, rapping her boots on the ground. “Did you do the homework?”

“No,” he said, eyes shifting to some pottery and away from her sharp glance. “I’m sorry. I --”

“Davy,” she interrupted, trying not to smile sadistically at the thought of punishing him, punishing the “gay kid”. “Pay attention. Are you hiding something under your desk?”

He had been hiding the book Grendel. But when she reached under the desk, my gum stuck to her hands instead of the book. The room laughed.

“You ... you ...” It was too much for words “GET OUT!” The room grew silent. There was a long pause.

“NOOOO!” he yelled. “I won’t! I WON’T listen to you!”

“I have HAD it with you!” said Ms. Paul. “You are going TO THE MENTAL WARD!!!”

She meant it. Nobody thought she did, but she did. I wish I had done something. Now I wonder what would have happened if not for that one stupid piece of gum?

Shadydentist

Yesterday, I saw a newborn seal resting on the snowy landscape of Canada. It was white, because it had not yet lost its protective fur coating. All alone on the ice. I assume that its mother was out fishing or something. This got me thinking.

Life is so delicate. This seal, who days earlier had not been born, was suddenly placed out here in the desolate wasteland, with nothing but a few harsh years to look forward to. And it was so utterly helpless. Completely dependent on its mother for everything. And I think that everyone, at some level, is dependent on other people, as we slowly spin out our short lives to their end.

As if to prove my point, some Canadian dude comes over, wearing a white parka and black boots, and clubs the seal to death. Life can be so weird, I swear.

Paien

There was a dip in the mountain-peaked skyline surrounding Hogwarts (School of Witchcraft and Wizardry) where the mountains became hills and the hills became a valley and in the valley there was...a lake. Harry found himself standing on it, buried to the knees in snow.

“Malfoy,” he grumbled. “What sort of family tradition is ice fishing? Even most Muggles aren’t so dim as to consider it a worth-while sport. They skate on lakes!”

Draco tugged at his boots complacently. “Damn. I've forgotten my roller skates.”

“You mean ice skates and you’ve entirely missed my point! Besides- why should I have to carry the bloody tent anyway?”

“Now, now." Draco patted Harry’s head in a furtive attempt to tame that wind-swept hair. “Play nice. It’s a pretty red tent. Like ruby drops of blood.”

“Poetic,” Harry snarled. “I suppose next the snow will be like vanilla ice cream and my eyes the color of frozen peas?”

“You’ve got a strange fixation on food, Potter,” said Draco. “How very Potter-y of you. I stand by my belief that you should work in a grocery store.”

It was then that Harry fell through the ice. They spent the better part of thirty minutes fishing him out.

“That,” said Draco, toweling Harry’s mane. “Is what I call poetic justice.”

“Haha,” said Harry darkly. “Shut up, boy with hair the color of a frost-bitten rubber duck.”

“Poetic justice,” Draco repeated, snickering. “It never fails.”

“Need I throw the tent at you?”

TheGraySheep

The weatherman said there’d be sun.

She walked through the garden; there were the bleeding hearts, that appeared to drip little ruby drops of blood from their curling petals onto the green expanse, and there was the freshness of the earth after the recent rains.

And then- sadly, oddly, disconcertingly, it was gone. Her boots trudged their weary path through the snow, leaving glimpses of black ground and shards of pottery in their wake. Wind-swept snowdrift pried into the crevices in her winter coat, and she looked despondently and slightly fearfully at the icicles which hung like spears, poised and ready to bludgeon the ground.

That was the weather; it’s coldness permeated every surface. She had been like ice.

“You should just stick to talking about the weather or something stupid like that,” she had retorted, regarding him evenly. “And you don‘t care, do you?”

She had snapped. Broken in two, like the icicle in the withering azaleas.

The sound of tearing paper startled a nearby bird. “That’s the same thing you said yesterday.” A pause. “I still don’t forgive you.” She refolded the letter and put it back in her pocket.

~

“It’s not like I didn’t know-,” she later wrote back, “I knew the whole time. You were cheating on me.” She walked back through the garden, her heavy boots mangling the unsightly, brittle stalks of bleeding hearts.

WINNER: (none)