And then... (prompt 1 of 7)

As I noted on Thursday, we are in the midst of Children’s Book Week! However, we only have a few days to celebrate, because it ends tomorrow. One of the main ways for celebrating this event, based on my perusal of the website, is to write stories based on prompts that are provided by famous authors as well as people just connected with the event.

So today I sat down and worked my way through all the prompts. I only gave myself 15 minutes to complete each prompt (because I don’t want to shame the kids who might be participating). So what you will find in bold, below, is the prompt given on the website, and then in non-bold, you will see where I decided to take the story. Happy Children’s Book Week!

Prompt One: “And Then….” Begun by National Ambassador Jon Scieszka and completed by Molly.

The guy at the pet store said he was pretty sure it was a Green Basilisk Lizard egg. But man, was he wrong. He could not have been more wrong. Now the newspaper wants to know what happened to my little brother, that nice old lady down the street, the left side of Washington Elementary School, and the three jets, two helicopters, four tanks, and 36,000 gallons of Marshmallow Fluff. They will probably cover up the true story. But here’s what really happened….

When this alleged “Green Basilisk Lizard egg” hatched, it hatched not my long-awaited Green Basilisk Lizard but in fact a little army of sea monkeys. It was freaky to see that many sea monkeys emerge from the egg, it was sort of like a clown car, in fact. But I had no idea how freaky it was about to get, because as soon as all the little sea monkeys were out of the egg, they started lining up in formations that spelled out words. Here is what they said:

“No more Mr. Nice Sea Monkeys…We are here to destroy your planet….First, though, we are hungry. Would you mind getting us 36,000 gallons of Marshmallow Fluff?”

That took about 20 minutes to spell out because they are so tiny. At this point, I was pretty hungry too, and now that they mentioned it, I could really go for some Marshmallow Fluff, so we headed down to the corner market and started going to town on every single thing of Marshmallow Fluff we could find, which was quite a lot actually, because I live in a town that manufactures Marshmallow Fluff. My little brother came along and started eating Marshmallow Fluff also, but it turns out he’s a diabetic so he really shouldn’t have been doing that. He died.

Another person who died while me and the sea monkeys ate Marshmallow Fluff was that “nice” old lady down the street, who tried to prevent us from eating any more Marshmallow Fluff. I was pretty hopped up on sugar by that point so I killed her with my bare hands. After eating so much Marshmallow Fluff, the sea monkeys were gigantic! They decided they wanted to steal three jets, two helicopters and four tanks from the local army base, and who was I to stop them? A sad little boy who had just watched his brother die from eating too much Marshmallow Fluff. Plus, I was still covered in all that little old lady’s blood.

The sea monkeys went off to steal their equipment from the military, and I was left to my own devices, which for awhile just consisted of eating chocolate and graham crackers in an effort to make smores in my stomach. Then I started feeling kind of gross so I went over to Washington Elementary School and threw up all over the left side of it. I mean, all over. I think I was throwing up things I ate last Tuesday.

So no matter how the newspaper, which is just a mouthpiece for fat cat conservatives, decides how they want to spin this story of what happened to my little brother, that nice old lady down the street, the left side of Washington Elementary School, and the three jets, two helicopters, four tanks and 36,000 gallons of Marshmallow Fluff, just remember this: never buy a Green Basilisk Lizard egg from the local pet store. Not that you’ll have much of a chance. From what I hear, the sea monkey army went after all the local pet stores first.