This is my Six-Sentence Thursday contribution to the GirlieOnTheEdge blog. Sometimes I use these tiny flash-fiction prompts to see how far I can condense a piece of writing without losing the meaning of the story.
This one is truly worthy of a howl. Fortunately, Harold did not blow the house down, although he displaced a small portion of the foundation.
We were starting high school and I was thrashing through cobwebs in my nerdy friend Harold’s basement so I could watch his latest experiment. He had me hunker down behind a bunch of dusty old boxes while he struck a match and lit a fuse hanging out of the foundation.
“What are you doing?” I howled.
“Ten,” he said.
“Come on, Harold, you’ve set your little experiment under the sill plate of your own house.”
He finished his countdown, smoke poured out of the little hole in the foundation, I ducked behind the boxes just before I heard an explosion and a spattering of stuff, and Harold jumped up and yelled, “It worked! It worked!”
LOL. This is the sort of thing either gives parents gray hairs or brings back memories of their own escapades. Well written SSS and short and to the point.
I remember a hearing that a friend of mine did something like this when we were kids. I don’t think his parents were very happy about it.
I enjoyed the audio 🙂
Forgotten youthful… exuberance? Enthusiasm? Craziness? lol.
Thank you. Since I have the option of using all kinds of media I try to use my little “recording studio” (tiny closet) and photos when I think of something. Wish I had a better mic.
Oh my! Explosive six!
Oh my. I know a few stories like this. Thanks for the memories.
lol
Well, of course he did!
Having been a youth, growing up in Y Chromia, I will say, “Because, to Harold, there was not only a good reason, there was a compelling reason.”
Fun Six!
Agreed. The friend I mentioned in a comment who did something like that always seemed compelled. Unfortunately he got it “beaten” out of him by the time he was an adult. (Not literally beaten). He completely lacks ambition now to do much but drink beer and hang out. Not a drunk, just lacking the spark he used to have.
That sounds like my #2 Son, the pyromaniac. Why, yes, i do have gray hair now, why do you ask?
None of my kids was a pyromaniac, but I had a nephew . . .