One Evening... (prompt 7 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 Seven: “One Evening…” Begun by Lemony Snicket and completed Molly.

This is the sort of story you should never read at night, because it is full of things that are frightening to think about when it is dark, such as hungry wolf, a bottle of poison, and a locked box with a terrible secret inside. However, the story is not at all frightening at the beginning, when a young girl named Roweena is living in a small cottage in the middle of the forest with two lumberjacks who are both named Tim. One evening, when Tim, Tim and Roweena were all having dinner, there was a knock on the door, but before anyone could answer it,...

Roweena’s cell phone rang.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Hey, it’s Molly!”

“Oh, Molly, I might have to call you back, we just had a knock on the door.”

“No! Don’t answer it!”

“Why?”

“Because if you answer that door, then you will begin a story that involves a hungry wolf, a bottle of poison, and a locked box with a terrible secret inside!”

“Oh my! Well, that does make sense. After all, we are in a story that was begun by acclaimed author Lemony Snicket.”

“True enough, and though I am a fan of Mr. Snicket’s work, I must demand that you not open that door, because I am finishing the story, and I am frankly just too tired to think of a scenario that includes a hungry wolf, a bottle of poison, and a locked box with a terrible secret inside!”

“You’re terribly lazy, Molly!”

“True enough. Fine, Roweena, if you want to open the door, do it.”

“Then I will, you lazy horrible writer.”

Roweena opened the door where she was greeted by a hungry wolf holding a locked box with a terrible secret inside. Luckily, Roweena had the key for the box right around her neck. She opened the box and was greeted by a note. It said, “You just drank poison, Roweena.”

“What a horrible secret!” Roweena exclaimed before she died. “Turns out that bottle of Diet Coke was actually a bottle of poison!”

Once Roweena had expired, the hungry wolf sat down at Roweena’s place and ate her meal. Tim and Tim vowed never to doubt Molly or call her lazy again.