At our monthly Writing is Fun meetings we usually have a Fast Write where an object, word, or other prompt is decided upon and each of us write something for five to ten minutes. There is quite a diversity of mini-writes. Some are real life recollections, some fictional vignettes, and sometimes there's a poem.
The prompt was this bottle. Here's what I wrote. The line break is where my time was up. Some in the group wanted it "finished." I did that at home and here's the "rest of the story."
The Bottle – Carol Kagan
September 2023
The bottle sat on Dr. Foster’s shelf. It was round, and short, and had a glass stopper pushed down into the neck. The afternoon sun streamed through the one crooked slat on the blinds and struck the glass. Sparkles were scattered across the gray walls of the room.
Five-year-old
Amelia was sitting near the doctor’s wide oak desk in a room with a doctor’s
office, antiseptic smell. Her mother and the doctor were talking but she wasn’t
listening. She was fascinated not by the bottle but by what was floating in the
yellow fluid inside. The thing had not floated to the top. It was unmoving and
just hung in the center of the liquid. It wasn’t round or square or long but it
definitely looked like food. Why would Dr. Foster keep a small piece of food in
a bottle?
Although
she had been told to stay still and sit on the chair, Amelia slowly bent
forward from the waist to get a closer look at the bottle. Squinting her eyes,
she stared then pushed the toes of her shoes on the carpet and slowly lifted up
just a bit, inching forward on the seat. There were thin pieces of hair or
sewing thread sticking out of it, but they were so tiny, so far away, she
couldn’t tell if they were moving.
Her
thoughts were interrupted when the room became quiet and still as Dr. Foster
and her mother had stopped talking. She sat back on the chair and looked at Dr.
Foster but she couldn’t help taking another quick look at the bottle. He turned
his head to see what had captured her attention.
Pushing back his desk chair, he stood and reached up for the bottle. He knelt in front of Amelia and slowly turned the bottle around.
= = = = =
The front of the bottle had
clear liquid in it! She could see it was a bug with a small red head and
little, tiny legs and feelers in front. He turned the bottle around and
it was yellow again. She could see a bright yellow spot on the tail of the bug.
“This,”
Dr. Foster said quietly, “ is a firefly or lightning bug that fell into this
bottle of white corn syrup just as it was flashing its bright yellow light.”
Amelia
leaned forward to get a better look. She had never seen one up close. On warm,
late summer evenings she had captured some but always let them go without
really looking at them.
Amelia’s
eyebrows wrinkled up as she asked him, “Why do you have this?”
“There
are some things that are just very unusual. That the lightning bug fell into
this bottle with such a skinny opening is unusual and that it was flashing at
the same time was unusual. But I don’t know why the corn syrup where the light
was shining turned yellow. And I never found anyone who knows why.”
“I would
like to have something unusual to keep,” Amelia said, looking at her mother who
smiled at her.
“Something
unusual will be happening in your family," Dr. Foster smiled. "Sometimes mothers have two babies at
the same time. That’s twins. You will soon have twin brothers join your
family.”
# # # #
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