At our monthly Writing is Fun meetings we decide a prompt for writing for the next meeting.
The Mascara Incident – Carol Kagan
It was a weird and fantastical Friday in school. It
began when I turned my phone to Sandy to see a TikTok mascara tutorial by a
girl named Meena.
“O. M. G.,” Sandy blurts out as she rolled her eyes.
“Look at her!”
“Oh, if she thinks she’s a star, no way,” I laugh. “I
can do better than that. She didn’t curl before rolling up the mascara.”
So, we go to the trophy case with all the mirrors to
record me putting on mascara. It’s in the alcove by the gym. I’m getting my
mascara and eyelash curler out while Sandy tries to get her phone ready to
record. She swings around to aim it and hits the case. Clunk. Clink. Clink.
Ting. The tall county championship trophy fell and smashed into pieces.
We look at each other, look around, and, just as the
class bell rings, we run to our next class. In different directions.
And that’s where Friday starts to unravel.
I’m running as Mr. Ryan, the janitor, comes around the
corner and says, “Stop running! What was that? What happened?”
And without any idea what to say I come up with
something to keep me out of trouble. I tell him that something came running
through the hall, bumped into the trophy case, and ran into the gym. Of course
he wants to know what kind of something. I tell him it was furry and fast and
maybe had a tail.
He jumps to the conclusion it was the racoon that hangs
out near the dumpsters at night. I quickly leave for history class.
Meanwhile, Sandy arrives at drama class. The
discussion is about a séance scene in the play Blithe Spirit. During class she
figures she needs a cover story in case someone saw her near the trophy case.
Listening to all this “seeing ghosts” stuff she comes up with a doozy. She
starts waving her hand for attention.
“Hey, I just saw a ghost near the trophy case right
after lunch. It was swirling around. I bet it was Agnes Moore, the famous
cheerleader from our school. She just died a few months ago.”
Now, everyone adores Miss King. She’s young, dramatic,
and ... enthusiastic. Good for a drama teacher, I guess.
She excitedly says to the class, “What an opportunity!
Our rehearsal tonight will be a séance to reach Agnes. It will be awesome if we
do. A chance to get a feel for how our characters act on stage. Six-thirty in
the art room next to the gym.” Then she adds, “Oh, this is so exciting!”
It’s the end of the Friday school day and I just want
to get out as soon as possible. Sandy runs up and grabs me at my locker.
She is panicked and says, “You are not going to
believe this! Miss King is holding a séance tonight because I told her I saw
the ghost of Agnes Moore flying around at the trophy case.”
I don’t even get “why” out before she explains that
was her idea of a cover story about the trophy falling and breaking and tells
me I have to come to the rehearsal. I tell her about the raccoon story. We figure
that after tonight we’ll be okay.
Miss King sets up a table with candles, a few
cheerleader pom-poms, red and white school colors tablecloth, and a newspaper
clipping about Agnes. Several guests, and I am one of them, sit in chairs
nearby and when she turns the lights out it’s very dark. The cast gathers around
the table with reading scripts in hand, but the candles don’t cast much light.
They tilt their pages toward the candles to read, and rehearsal begins.
Suddenly the hall lights go out. There is a group gasp, and we are in complete
darkness except for the candles.
A small red light dances around the room, coming
through the door window from the darkened hallway. Up, down, up, down, from
under the door, reflecting off the glass in the picture frames around the room.
Miss King, breathing heavily, calls out to Agnes to show herself. She is
excited and as she stands up her script falls onto a candle, catching fire.
Well, now there’s some light in the room, but we still see the red light.
The heat from the fire triggers the sprinklers and the
fire alarm. A few minutes later the hall light comes on, and Mr. Ryan opens the door and turns on
our lights.
So, in the end, Sandy’s story was the best and now
Agnes, in the spotlight again, is blamed for breaking the trophy and the school
has a ghost story to add to its history.
Mr. Ryan is determined to catch the raccoon. He is
sure he saw tracks near the double doors that open to the back alley. After his
dinner he comes back to the school to stake out the gym and the hallway near
the trophy case. He turns the lights off and uses night vision glasses and a
flashlight with a red filter to search.
Slowly he swings the flashlight left, then right, then
up into the folded bleachers. Back and forth, up, and down, out into the
hallway, around the trophy case. All down the hall and around the classroom
doors. Checking the tops of display
cases and along the baseboards.
Suddenly the fire alarm begins to blast, and lights
flash on and off. Sprinklers go on. He turns the lights on and checks the gym. It’s
secure, so he goes down the hall checking all the rooms. He opens the art room
door and finds Miss King and a bunch of students, wet from the sprinklers, in
front of a table set with candles. It is obvious that this is the source of the
fire.
Above the screeching fire alarm, they explain to him
how Agnes appeared as a red apparition, a small red light flailing around the
room. She must have been angry about something and broke the trophy. Mr. Ryan
quicky slips his red filtered flashlight into his back pocket. He adopts the
Agnes Moore story. He’s not afraid of no ghosts.
~ ~ ~ ~
HERB SAMPLER Second Edition
Buy one for yourself and consider getting a few more as the winter holidays approach – hostess gifts, housewarming and holiday presents.
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