Her mother knew what she could do. The first time she held her breath in the bathtub underneath the floating rubber ducky was at first a shock to the mother, who panicked, thought that her kid had drowned, and called 9-11. When the paramedics went to lift the girl out of the tub, who looked as dead as the dead, the girl burst forth from the water like the creature from the Black Lagoon. The paramedics left a bill and exited immediately, unamused by the girl's antics.
Now her mother, a laid-off factory worker, had the idea that her daughter could win the underwater holding your breath contest. The boat would be theirs. So, without consulting with her daughter beforehand, the daughter was signed up.
"You're doing this for your family's future," the mother told the girl.
This made the girl nervous. She felt like she was losing her breath as thoughts of what the people would say about her unnatural talent after she'd won flooded her mind.
"Boy, join your sister." The mother's command shook him to the bone.
There were too many compromises to be made. He even had to change his name and hated that. Why do this for her? She was always bossing him around towards things that weren't to his liking. But, he couldn't let down his big sister. She was always there for him.
"Fine. Okay," he said batting away her hand as she smeared her wet fingertips across his face to get the deep dirt stains lighter to match his face better.
The girl and the boy strolled up to the register's desk and asked for the paperwork. After taking the paperwork back to their mother and it was filled out, they returned it. The man gave the two a strange glance that made both of the kids feel like they were about to jump off a cliff without a parachute.
The man waved them on past the gates and into the pool with the rest of the contestants who ranged from age eight up to eight-eight.
The boy and the girl got into the water, it was chilly and it started to feel like an assault being carried out by marching ants on their little bodies.
The scent of tangerines filled the air as the man spit out the seeds. "You will win if you are the last to come up after twenty minutes." He held up a clock and shouted, "GO!"
The boy and the girl dunked their heads. Keeping their eyes open, they saw fish as colorful as a double rainbow. Many of the contestants breathed out because of the beauty before them, causing them to rise early.
The boy and the girl were still under the water. Listening with their ears, they head the sweet, melodic sounds of whales somewhere of in the distance. Many of the contestants who were left, caught the sounds directly into their eardrums, causing them to rise after they let out their breath.
The boy and the girl were two out of the four left. All four kept their sites locked onto the sharks that had come seemly out of nowhere. Luckily for the boy and the girl, one of the contestants had a patch of blood leaking its way into the water, which caused the sharks to go after that one and the person closest to that person.
Seeing that they were the only two left, the boy and the girl hurried out of the water after they were sure twenty minutes were up.
The man, disappointed and mumbling about how something didn't go as planned, tossed the keys to the boat into the hands of the girl and said, "I'll find out how you survived soon enough." With that, the man packed up and vanished.
Freewrite brought to you by @mariannewest and @freewritehouse
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Old list of completed freewrites
New list:
| Non-Fiction | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dachshund |
| Fiction | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uncertain Future | Screeching Tires | No Panic | Dirt Bike | Law and Order |
| Pecan | Stone Wall | Inappropriately Dressed | Community Garden |
| Ongoing Stories | Numbered in Order of Story's Progression | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Poems | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Spider Web |
| Weekend Freewrites: | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Ferris Wheel | Lion by the River | The Feeding | Space Ring | Witchy Things |
| That Fishy Smell | The Light | The Little Ghouls |
| We-writes (collaborations with community members) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| The Maze |