Pearls- Cyndi

Her mother stood before her, looking excited and anxious at the same time. Carly stared at her, as if she were seeing her for the first time. Her mother had always been there for her through thick and thin. She was beginning to realize just how much she had taken for granted. Her mother had supported her since the death of her father when she was a baby. It now came to her- all the sacrifices that were made on her behalf, the hours of work, the time spent making memories and helping Carly to feel loved and secure growing up. Perhaps she had never really looked at her mother this way before. She just knew her as “mom”.



Carly looked her in her eyes and thought she seemed slightly shorter than she last remembered. Then there were the eyes themselves, the blue still sparkled with her mother’s spunk, but they didn’t seem quite as bright anymore. Her loving face had a few more lines and wrinkles and her graying hair was thinning in places. But to Carly, she was still a very beautiful woman. She wore a dress of mauve, with lace on the bodice and a skirt of a tasteful length. She had put a lot of time into choosing just the right dress for this occasion. For today was Carly’s wedding day.


There had been so many hours of planning, preparing for this day and their exciting new life together. And here it was, all coming true. Carly was in her elegant white gown with the tiny buttons running down the back and the flowing train trailing behind her . Her bridesmaids had helped her put on her veil. The last finishing touches were complete. The butterflies in her stomach felt like they were trying to escape but were trapped by the confining fabric of her dress. She took some deep breaths to calm her nerves. These were the last few moments before she was to walk down the aisle, and her mother had asked to have this time with her in private. Carly waited as her mother brought her hands from behind her back and presented her with a velvet box.

“These were your grandmother’s”, she said as she held it out to her. “She wore them on her wedding day and I on mine. Now it is your turn!”

Carly slowly took the box that showed signs of wear on the edges, and gingerly opened it. Inside lay a necklace of pearls. She had heard about them, and even seen them in her mother’s wedding pictures, but had never beheld them in real life. She ran her fingers lightly over the small delicate strand.

“Oh mom!” she exclaimed as she hugged the precious woman before her.

She could feel the tears of joy welling up inside, threatening her perfectly applied make-up. “I love you!”





Prompt: Pearls August 9, 2008

"What Is It?" - Maya

They were hunkered down in a tight little knot in the clearing, all skinny-legged, skinned knees, brown summer bodies. The four of them. It was amazing that by this hot late August afternoon they were all still playing together. Every day since school let out they'd seemed to triangulate, three against one, and every day in a new configuration. Today Marcie was the odd one out. Surprisingly, this happened relatively rarely. Surprising in that she was the only girl. Conventional wisdom would have her be the isolated one most of the time, but conventional wisdom didn't hold in this case. Marcie got along well with everyone. But today she had really wanted to go to the pool, not into the woods. She'd been outvoted, so she'd grumbled as she'd trailed along behind them. It was too hot, she complained.

"Yeah, but it will be cooler in the woods," Davie had argued.

"Better be," she'd mumbled back.

Now they were in a clearing, out in the direct sun, but even Marcie was too fascinated to notice.

"What is it?" she asked.

The others shook their heads or hunched their shoulders. Sean poked it with a stick.

"Maybe it's an alien," he said.

"A dead alien," Davey replied.

It was small. No bigger than a cat or skunk, or maybe a possum. But it wasn't any of those. Its back legs were longer than the front ones, and five-toed. Kind of .... human. It only had one eye left, but that one was large and round.

"Hey, know what I just realized?" Frankie said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. "It doesn't stink. Shouldn't it stink?"

Frankie would notice something like that. He was the quiet one, the observer. Frequently the odd man out in this group of extroverts. But he could be stubborn. He stuck to his guns. The other three admired that in him, and although they never said it, they all thought of Frankie as "the smart one."

"I didn't think of that," Sean acknowledged. "Maybe it is an alien, and thier bodies don't stink."

"What'll we do with it?" Marcie asked. "Like, shouldn't we take it to a scientist or something?"

"I'm not picking that thing up," Davie said.

"Me neither," agreed Sean.

"Okay, let's bury it, then," Marcie said.

"Why? Then we'll never find out what it is," Davey retorted.

"I know," Frankie said. "I'll take a picture of it on my cell phone. Then we'll bury it. We can show the picture to someone to identify it."

They all agreed. But without a shovel or trowel or anything to dig with, they wound up just covering it up with stones and leaves.

They decided to go to Sean's dad. he worked at the university in the Physics Department. So, when he got home from work they descended on him . It turned out that his colleagues in Biology were intrigued, once the kids convinced them it was not a hoax.

The four of them were excited to take the scientists to the makeshift grave site. They found it easily enough. But when they removed the stones and leaves, what they found was nothing. Nothing at all. No trace. Not a bone, not a hair, not a scrap of DNA.

They never did find out what it was.


Prompt: "What is it?" 8/16/08

Science Experiment - JohnD

Belinda and Joey looked up at the hole in the ceiling. A small sliver of drywall fell from the edge of the hole, spiraling downward as a flow of dust descended upon them. Joey watched the piece of drywall flutter off toward the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen.

Finally, the poetically drifting sliver landed on the metallic frame of the launcher, which had just finished hopping several feet sideways, repeatedly bouncing off the wall, making deep gouges into it.

Joey had been aware of the launcher's post-launch maneuvers, but feeling safely out of its reach, he had paid more attention to the hole that now adorned the ceiling. The launcher was finished with its tantrum and sat comfortably entrenched inches into the wall. “Well, that was....fascinating,” Joey stated tentatively. “I mean, in an against-all-laws-of-physics kind of way.

Belinda was still analyzing the opening in the ceiling.

Joey squinted to focus his eyes farther up through the hole. “It went clean through the first floor. It looks like it went through your bed....That doesn't even seem possible.”

Belinda continually angled left, right, back, and forth to get the best possible view. “Yes, that's my bed all right. I can see daylight. It went right through the roof. I figured it had to. I mean, with the amount of force obviously involved. I think we really have something here Joey.”

“'We'?” Asked Joey. “You know, I wasn't really involved here in the scientific part of any of this. I'm the language arts type. It was definitely your invention, idea, design, everything. Wouldn't you say?”

Belinda didn't answer, still completely engrossed by the aperture they had just created in the ceiling.

Joey paused and then started up again. “So, as you speak of this event going forward, you would definitely want to use the first-person singular pronoun, 'I.'” Joey quickly ran his hands back and forth through his hair, stirring up a small cloud of white dust. “Anyway,” he continued, “you were right. It worked.”

“Okay, so you owe me a dollar!” proclaimed Belinda proudly. “You still think girls aren't good at science?”

“I'm not so sure,” resisted Joey.

Belinda's eyes widened. “You're saying that you don't owe me a dollar?!”

“Calm down, I'm not saying that at all. I mean, that was obviously way more than ten feet. I owe you the dollar for sure....Um, but wait a minute. Not to change the subject, but do you know what my main concern is at the moment?”

“What's that?”

Joey looked back up at the hole. “That bowling ball. It's going to have to come back down, right?”

“Hmmm, good point,” Belinda said, bringing her hand to her chin in concentration. “Yeah, I should have thought of that by now. It's just that it was so unexpected. I was thinking that it might go 10 to 15 feet up in the air, but that sucker must've launched 500 feet, maybe. Or who knows? Maybe we just turned that bowling ball into a satellite.”

“'We' again?” asked Joey, throwing his arms up in the air slightly. “Anyway, my point is that you might not be that great at science. Better than me of course since I'm just a literature kind of kid, but you're the one who said, against my advice mind you, 'let's put the bowling ball in the launcher then move it outside.' In hindsight, you gotta admit that doesn't seem too smart.”

“Well,” growled Belinda, looking at the launcher smashed up against the wall across the living room, “I was just trying to save us an extra trip. Besides there's no way it should have launched by simply placing the ball into it.”

“Proving my case.” Joey spoke slowly, articulating his words. “Are you good at science or is your contraption possessed? Divine intervention perhaps. Maybe it was just dumb luck.”

“Dumb?” Belinda snapped.

Suddenly, they heard a whistling noise from above that was quickly increasing in volume. They each took a step backwards as the bowling ball came crashing back through the same hole, blasting by them in a blur, and driving deep into the wooden floor, sending splinters flying and vibrations rippling throughout the house. A new and thicker cloud of dust emanated throughout the room as the thunderous noise of the crash started to spread outward beyond the walls of the house.

They looked at each other, mouths agape. Joey gulped. “Darn it! I got sidetracked. I just mentioned the ball coming back down and then forgot all about it.” As he spoke, he looked back and forth from the hole in the ceiling and the ball in the floor. “Another thing, how is it that the ball came down through the exact same hole? I mean, exactly.” Joey coughed as he tried to swat away the chalky powder in the air. “That came down not even an inch off the path that it went up,” he said as he pulled a one inch splinter of wood out of his shirt. It pierced his shirt at the collar, passing halfway through before coming to a stop. “By the way,” he said smiling, “this missed my jugular by a centimeter.” He held the piece of wood between his fingers before flicking it to the ground.

Belinda looked at the bowling ball lodged deeply into the floor of her living room. “Yes, this is a very positive development, I'd say.”

“Positive,” Joey repeated. “Funny, I was thinking of a different word. But you know us language types, we're always obsessing on semantics.”

“There's a lot going on here,” Belinda continued. “Sorry about your jugular....um, that could have turned out not so well. We got the bowling ball back, though,” she said cheerfully. “That's good news. And coming down the exact same path, that could be huge: another totally unexpected result. I wonder if that was a one-time deal or an aspect of the launcher's design. If it's consistent, there's just gotta be some real world application for that.”

“You know what my concern is now?” asked Joey.

“What's that?” inquired Belinda as she noticed an inch wide piece of floorboard wedged deeply into the base of the leather couch.

“Well, I'm just wondering if I can get out of here before your parents get home. I'm sure you all will have lots to talk about.”

“Yes, Yes,” Belinda agreed. “This is so big. We have an absolute scientific breakthrough here.”

Joey cringed as the word “we” left Belinda's lips. “Yeah, YOU definitely deserve credit for that.”

Belinda turned toward Joey and grabbed him momentarily by the shoulders. “I don't think you grasp the significance of this discovery. We'll be famous for this, and rich, too.”

“Rich?” asked Joey as his he stood up straighter. “How rich?”

“Very!” replied Belinda as she performed a cursory examination of her clothing and body, looking for splinters or wounds of any kind. “It's like we've tapped into a previously unknown energy source. Everyone's gonna wanna talk to us.”

“You mean, besides the police and fire department?”

“Everyone,” repeated Belinda, swinging her arms out in opposite directions left and right as she spoke, “talk shows, physicists, corporations, everyone!”

“Oh,” said Joey looking off into space with a smile, “well, WE did work hard on this experiment.” His gaze drifted toward the hole in the ceiling, which instantly snapped him out of his daydream. “Well, until the money starts flowing in, I hope your parents can see the other positives of the situation.”

“Of course,” agreed Belinda, “like the pure merit of this scientific breakthrough.”

“Yeah, like that.” Joey nodded. “They might also see that 12-year olds, even if they are scientific geniuses, which is debatable, really aren't responsible enough to be left home alone, so hopefully they'll chalk this all up to a learning experience.”

“You are the practical one Joey, that's why it's nice to have you around,” Belinda said as she blew a puff of air upward dislodging a fine layer of dust from her face.

“Good, so remember to cite the positive when discussing this matter with your parents. Okay Belinda? You with me on this?”

“Okay, cite the positive. I will.”

Joey started patting down his clothing to beat off the dust. “A big positive here is that we didn't get hurt. I mean, just look at this place. And you and I don't have a scratch on us. That's a miracle. I hope your parents are appreciative of that fact.”

“Don't worry,” assured Belinda. “My parents will be very grateful that we're both okay. They'll also be proud of this little science experiment. It really is a doozy. Unprecedented, I would say.”

“Well, good luck with that,” said Joey with a nod as he walked backward toward the front door. “I would say no reason to mention me in any of this. Um, well, at least until Oprah calls.” Joey backed up bowing and nodding as he occasionally glanced backward trying to negotiate furntiture and the two steps up to the entrance hall. “But if, uh, you do feel compelled to bring up my name, remember that I said, 'let's bring the launcher outside first, then put the bowling ball in it.' You know, um, I think that's an important point.”

Belinda smiled and nodded, looking up proudly at the hole in the ceiling.

“So, anyway,” Joey persisted, “I'll be moseying along. Congratulations. It really is an impressive experiment. It should win first place at the science fair for sure.”

And with that, Joey turned around, opened the front door, and launched out of there fast and recklessly, kind of like a bowling ball.