Angie loved her tea parties, especially when mommy and daddy joined her. It was a lovely spring day with a gentle breeze wafting through the canopy of the old shag bark hickory tree in the Matherson's front yard. Angie had arranged Mr. Zeek, Mrs. Fluffy and the Hoppy Twins in their favorite spots around the table. The table was set with her finest tea set and cups filled and biscuits had been served. Mommy sat to Angie's left and daddy to her right. They were being very quiet today but that kind of made sense. They had been very worried about some very bad things that had been happening lately.
They wouldn't tell her just what was going on but Angie knew something was going on. Bad people were up to something but mommy and daddy only talked about it in whispers when they thought Angie couldn't hear them. But she heard some stuff. Sometimes she overhead bits and pieces of what mommy and daddy would say and sometimes what the news man was saying on TV. There was a sickness going around and it made people do bad and crazy things!
There was some old man from the "Center for the fleas control" on TV that talked about some super bad sickness that was spreading around and the army was rounding people up who were sick. Angie saw pictures of funny looking people that looked sick and cars and buildings on fire. She saw people screaming and running and people dressed for Halloween. Then mommy turned the TV off and told her to go play in her room. But later when mommy and daddy were watching TV with the sound turned way down Angie snuck outside to go meet her friend Nancy in their super secret hideout. Nancy said she heard something about people turning into camel bulls and that the army had told everyone they had to stay home and couldn't leave. Nancy was very mad about this because they were planning on going to Six Flags that weekend and now they couldn't. Not only that but her parents had told her she wasn't allowed to leave the house cause they were afraid she would get the really bad flu that was going around. That's when Kenny showed up at their super secret hideout and he looked really sick.
Angie poured mommy more tea and brushed the fly off of mommy's forehead. Daddy's cup fell to the ground but he didn't seem to notice. He just stared off in the distance as if he was thinking about something and wasn't really interested in the tea party. Angie was a little disappointed. It had been a lot of work for her, Nancy and Kenny to get mommy and daddy to the tea party and now mommy and daddy didn't seem to be having a good time. They just sat there looking rather sad and didn't even notice when flies landed on them. Not even when they landed on their eye balls or tried to crawl inside their mouths. And it was such a perfect day for a tea party.
3 comments:
Whee, fun! Writing from a kid's perspective can be tricky - there's a balancing act between being too dry and going overboard and being too cutesy. Nice tightrope walk!
Thanks. Actually had not occurred to me until after I had started writing. Thought that would make it a little creepier.
Oh, it was definitely creepy, Shawn! Nice, that you went with your strengths there! And I agree with Sean - nice balancing act.
Post a Comment