Mini Short Stories: 2020 Volume 1

Bait

Carmen and I are cousins and we were spending our holiday at our grandmother’s home. We were easily bored. We wanted to go out and have fun, but our parents, who coincidentally worked in the same department of the same company, were working so hard to launch a new product that there was barely any time for them to entertain us with the usual holiday fun. We had to entertain ourselves. We did reading challenges, then baking challenges plus makeup, calligraphy  and sewing challenges. We were always switching to something new.

We were in the middle of a painting session when Carmen had a brainstorm. “We should prank our parents!”. I just gave her a look and turned back to my colouring book. “Joanne, this will be good!” she insisted. She nagged me until I responded. “Our parents are coming home late tonight. I might be asleep by then.” “Well let’s visit Mona then.” I was already up.

Mona is an absolutely fascinating, crotchety and old goat who lived on Grandma’s farm. Although it’s Grandma’s farm, Grandma does not actually garden or do any farm work. She hired persons to do that for her when she bought it so she just lounges under a shady mango tree. She waved at us as we innocently skipped passed her station. Ten minutes later she was horrified as she saw us yell and run away from Devil Mona who we had set loose. There was still a long length of rope trailing from her neck and she snorted and made weird noises. We laughed at first as we baited her by calling her names and stopping and running away. However we soon realised that she was faster, meaner and more unpredictable than we could have anticipated. Mona ran directly for Grandma.

I never knew my dainty and fashionable grandmother could scale a tree, but she was up it looking terrified and yelling for her workers while yelling for us to get away. She stayed up there shouting commands until they captured Mona after which she promptly fainted and fell out of the tree. 

Our parents were livid when we met them at the hospital. They demanded explanations and threatened extensively. Unfortunately, they also decided to euthanize Mona because she was so violent.  Our fun had gone too far. It cost us our parents’ trust in us and it hurt Grandma. This was bad, but I promise we are not bad people. We were just careless but our idle behaviour had caused Grandma’s broken leg and Mona’s early exit. Carmen and I lost our allowance for three months plus the family trip was cancelled. We never forget the results of our silly actions.

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This one ends a bit sad, but it doesn't feel very sad overall does it?

I actually wanted this to be comical and I immediately imagined a pair of naughty and bored girls and the diva grandmother.

It honestly took a while to connect the dots and Mona had to make the ultimate sacrifice after being baited. 😰

Have you ever met an animal that was bad- tempered and always angry?

This was a story that was challenging because I wanted to write much more, but I still fit in a beginning, a middle and an end.😅

Do you agree with the punishment at the end?

What should have happened to Mona instead?

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