By Prospero Dae
A cold nose. Later she spots a top-notch tail out of the corner of her eye.
And here we have a girl and a boy (he’s visiting) on a couch. It’s either the weekend or the schoolhouse has burnt down.
The girl, prepubescent, asks the boy, prepubescent, to guess how many jelly beans are in the jar she is holding (close to her heart).
“How should I know?” retorts the boy.
“Dalmatian.”
“What’s that?” asks the boy.
“A hint!”
She lowers the jar, now next to her ruddy knee. Oh, the treachery of images!
“I give up,” says the boy.
“101.”
I did not catch- on immediately, as I would have, if the dalmatian had been plural, but this is very, very clever, indeed!
Ha! And they–the proverbial ‘they,’ a coven of quick-tempered dwarfs, as it were–said I wouldn’t know a pop culture reference if it hit me in the face.
And I’m not a big fan of Disney. Can I say Disney? Darn, I just did.
How cute! I love the sense of shyness portrayed by both children, with the girl holding the jar close to her heart and the boy hiding behind his curt retort.
Yes, the children are cute. The narrator, however, seems to be a bit more grown up.
Great ‘pun’ Prospero! Love the story!
It was hard to resist playing around with the 101 of 101words.org, our gracious host, and it’s an apt metaphor as they force us to count words like jelly beans–which the girl presumably counted!
The Disney thing was a bonus!
Funny! And re-reading, I found this “background” line that is so great: “It’s either the weekend or the schoolhouse has burnt down.”
Tony, I know re-reading is considered a cardinal sin by most, so I thank you dearly for the extra effort.
“…or the schoolhouse has burnt down.” I know, the logic is impeccable!
And here we have a magician, descending right out of tempestuous heaven, and a Polish spy sharing, by some Beckettian chain of events, the same couch. The (beautiful, as all spies are) Polish spy holds a piece of lilac cloth in her hand, and asks the magician to guess how many and what type of seeds she keeps hidden in the cloth (her being a spy allows her to ask two different questions at the same time, compared to the girl in the story). She adds that the seeds have to be planted and taken care of with the utmost devotion until they grow blossoms which contain an encoded message necessary to expose a killer.
How should i know? asks the magician, frowning.
The spy takes her bag and out of it she skillfully produces a big long-focus lens, which she places carefully next to her delicate knee. Oh, the treachery of images!
What’s that? asks the magician, frowning.
A hint!
I don’t know!
Ok, i will give you another hint, you are after all a magician and not a simple boy: you almost share with him a birthday.
I give up! says the magician.
You always give up! laughs the spy.
Here the story ends as spies are known to be as cruel as they are beautiful and thus the mystery is not revealed 🙂 It should be noted that, as already apparent from the insistent repetition of the number TWO, the story contains exactly 2×101 words and it is called Doubly Self-Referential, (also) a clin-d’oeil to Prospero’s first story here, which opened this series of gems which are an inspiration and a delight and for which i am very grateful to him.
Dearest Roxana,
Taking care to temporarily remove your extraordinary epexegesis, I assiduously counted the words (I’m lying–I used MS Word) in this enchanting spy-master novelette, and it is in fact 202 words in length! You must be related to a mathematician or a numerologist to have settled upon the number thusly; moreover, your text is devilishly Byzantine and surpasses the sum of all of Bond’s gadgets (and there were some doozies) in darkling creativity. I dare say we should collaborate on a novel. I only have one condition–Chapter 1 must feature a dwarf in some prominent way. If you are agreeable to said condition, my lawyer will contact you to sign some documents (101 pages for a novel, 202 if it’s a series).
Beautiful…comical, poetic and endearing.
I consider ‘poetic’ to be a great compliment. I thank you sincerely.
This story was adorable! I also loved the way you used the parenthesis in the middle of the sentences. It was very clever.
Thank you Rachel. Most writers are (probably) children that never quite grew up.