s o . . . This is bad. I wasn't actually going to write anything for this round, but then I kinda... did. Accidentally. So it's quite bad and v choppy and I have no excuse for it other than laziness, which we all know is not an excuse XD Fair warning.
I've also filched HillbillieNolan's ingenious idea of including a shot of the story's perameters above 👌
Without further ado~
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Tommy looked at the glass cup on the table. He looked at it hard. Something inside him really, really, really wanted to push it over.
His hand twitched toward it, but, "No!" he shouted in his mind, and with a kick of his short legs he forced the hand to lie still.
His mother looked at him sharply. She seemed to read his mind. "Don't even think about it," she warned him.
-
Later, when he was drawing, he wondered suddenly what crayons tasted like. They just looked so biteable, and his hand snuck to his mouth.
"Tommy," said Dad.
He put the crayon down.
-
At the supermarket with Mum, he really, really, really wanted to play with the cans. He wanted to roll them across the floor. He wanted to use them as drums. He wanted to see how many he could carry at once, and how long it would take him to fill the trolley with them, and how long after that the trolley would break. He picked up one of the cans, and looked at it for a while.
Then he slowly put it back.
"Mum," he said, trotting back to her, "my head told me to touch the cans, and I was goin' to, but then I just didn't!"
"That's good," she answered dryly, and Tommy puffed his chest out proudly in agreement.
-
That evening his tummy was empty and aching and his eyes were sore and his whole body felt like one big itch. He shouted while the baby cried, and cried when he couldn't turn the tap on for a drink of water and had to ask Mum for help, and laughed so hard he almost began to cry again when Dad farted.
Suddenly he wanted to swing from the fire-screen, something he was most definitely not allowed to do.
"No!" he shouted to himself, but only very quietly; in his head, so Mum and Dad couldn't hear. "Yes!" he shouted back. "No, no, no! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!"
Before he could stop himself, the fire-screen was in his hands and he was leaning back on it, pulling with all his weight - and his dad was frowning.
Tommy sat on the floor and rubbed his eyes and tried not to cry again.
"You know you're not allowed to do that," Dad said, sitting down beside Tommy, who buried his face in his knees.
"I know! My head said to swing on it and I told it no and it jus' kept intewupting me!" Self-pitying tears welled in his eyes at the sound of the cracks in his own sad voice.
Dad smiled affectionately, picked him up, and held him close. He didn't say anything more; he carried his small son off to cook dinner together.
-
Settled at the bench with a measuring cup, Tommy saw the salt shaker and wondered what would happen if he tipped it upside down...
