A Case of the Pumpkins -- a five-minute #freewrite
"Pumpkin?" Jenny asked, wrinkling her nose.
There was a pumpkin sitting on the table. Well, not quite sitting on the table, but more weighing it down. The poor piece of furniture buckled under the weight of the giant vegetable and it looked as though the wood would crack at any moment and send the pumpkin tumbling to the floor -- through the floor. Would home insurance pay out for repairs due to damage by giant vegetable? Or was it a fruit? It had seeds so it was probably a fruit just like a tomato.
Why was she letting her mind run all over the place? She shook her head then glared at Joey.
"Why the heck is there a pumpkin on the table?"
Joey grabbed a large knife and flipped it from hand to hand.
"You said that you love pumpkin! So I got us a giant one. We can make some soup. With a side of roasted pumpkin seeds like my aunty used to make. Oh, oh! And a few bowls of chunky pumpkin piiiieee," he sang.
"I said that I loathe pumpkin. It's disgusting. We made pumpkin soup in Home Ec. once..." her voice trailed off and she narrowed her eyes as Joey began his pumpkin onslaught. "Hold on a moment. It was you. You were the kid who downed it all in a single gulp and projectile-vomited it across the quad. I've never liked pumpkin since, you jerk."
Joey cackled, already elbow deep in the gross vegetable-fruit with pumpkin-guts flying every which way as he dove deeper into its orange bowels.
"Joey."
He ignored her and burrowed deeper into the great pumpkin, then, with all innards cleared from the thing, he popped it atop his head.
"Look, Jenny -- I'm an R. L. Stine character come to life!"
Hellooooooo! It's day 961 of @mariannewest's five-minute #freewrite challenge. The prompt for today is -- pumpkin -- and this is what I came up with before the eggtimer website beeped at me. Give an extra couple of minutes for a quick tidy up.
You can find today's prompt at the following link:
https://peakd.com/hive-161155/@mariannewest/day-961-5-minute-freewrite-monday-prompt-pumpkin
Join usssss! You know you want to.
Testing out PeakD's "also include in my blog" option today... curious to see how it works. 😊
Until next time! Thanks for reading! ❤️
I suppose "love" and "loathe" do sort of sound the same. But I think Joey is just a stinker. I hope the pumpkin got stuck on his head!
Haha! It probably did get stuck on his head. I can see it now.
(He's totally a stinker) 😁
Quick visit from Uncle Bruni 💕💕
Hulloooooo! 😁
Hahahaha
Jenny should be acquitted if she murders Joey.😂
Haha! I don't think it'll ever come to murder... maybe. 😅
Loved your story. I definitely didn't see that ending coming. I have to learn to type. I can only get about half that many words done in 5 minutes. Great job.
Thank you! 😊
Haha, after the 5minutes was up I thought of the perfect last word to put in... Jenny referring to him as the Living Dummy rather than a Pumpkin Head 😂 (I read far too much R L Stine as a kid)
Typing is a great sport. I try to get faster every year. 😅 At the moment I can do about 105 words per minute if I really put my mind to it, hovering more around 90 normally though.
Jenny and Joey are BAAAACK! So they knew each other as youths? Love thinking they've known each other since way back when. Is he going to barf on her? hahahahaha. Just before she is due to set off for work?
I'll be back with the Tuesday prompt when marianne posts it!!!!
Yesssss! Hahaha!
My personal little backstory for them is that they were childhood acquaintances, though not quite the best of friends. She would be amused by his Class Clown antics, only to find herself tormented by them instead as they grow up. 🤣
Roommates, check. Going all the way back to Home Ec class in school? oooh, I love it! #New#Backstory!
#backstory!!!
I thought very hard about this just before #maynia began 😊 this is the teeny bit I wrote about it on my notes page:
Joey and Jenny met at school.
He was the class clown, the kid who’d do anything to elicit a giggle from his classmates, normally at the expense of the teacher.
She was one who’d without fail giggle at his shenanigans. She would never admit it, but she liked him back then.
School ended and they lost contact, as people tend to do. As Fate would have it though, they would meet again -- muahaha!
Oooh I love it!
This backstory is a short story in and of itself. )
What a freewrite! Well, might be a coincidence but I'm a huge pumpkin lover :D
I don't mind little bits of pumpkin if its been souped up with a lot of other things. 😊 Other than that though, I'm not a great fan.
(What happened to Jenny in Home Ec might also be lightly based on a true story, HAHA!) 😬🎃
The best anecdotes and fictional asides tend to come straight from real life!
The best minor characters, too.
I agree. We all have had friends, family or coworkers in our life that transfer perfectly into entertaining or fascinating fictional characters.
Luv'd it.
Cheers 🙃
Oooh, Goosebumps!! #loveit
an R. L. Stine character come to life!
Now we understand Joey. :) #GottaLoveJoey!!!!!
He could probably be an R. L. Stine character in his own right. 😅 Incoming! All new HORROR version of Joey and Jenny!! 🤣
YES yes YES bring it on
The bucket of orange paint all over her job-interview attire was horrific, but you proved with a fairy and a cell-phone charger (ahem, that was not a spoiler, honest) that you can HORRIFY us like nobody's business!
The funny thing with that phone charger was that I wasn't even trying to be horrific -- that whole story I was just thinking up the most ludicrous things I could each day. 😅
I really need to unpublish that thing and give it the re-write it deserves..... can people do that? Unpublish and republish? I love that it gave me experience. I hate that I cringe every time I think someone is reading it. I don't know why. Is it horrible or am I just being stupid? I intentionally keep it quiet now so that no-one knows it exists. Sigh.
Um, you DID publish the novel, didn't you? and right after I reviewed it, Amazon purged me for violation of the Friends and Family policy. If you refer to the daily posts during NaNoWriMo, who's going to find those now? At least, that's how I feel about my own awful NaNo novel. I should purge it, but I figure nobody will find it anyway. Much less waste time reading it all. As I recall, yours was fine--not an embarrassment!--but I don't recall how much got edited before the novel came out (and congratulations on that!).
Yes, I did publish it... and you did review it... and that whole kerfuffle happened.
No-one can find the original draft unless they go through blockchain records and see my edits: I deleted the content off every post. But I'm just embarrassed by the book.
Doesn't matter in the greater scheme of things I guess.
I'm amazed that you're so embarrassed by this story! I love so many things about it!
I think the main things with it that I'm hating now are:
The god-awful sex scene.
There are two chapters that are zap quick and feel strange and cut-off even to me, as the writer re-reading. I can't imagine how a normal reader would feel about that.
Other than that... I guess it's okay! But I really work myself up sometimes, that's all...🙃
I don't remember the sex scene 🙃 but I never remember battle scenes either, mostly because I speed-read or skim anything too graphic for me. "Moonfall" is a great story. Don't sell yourself short!
It wasn't on my NaNoWriMo draft -- I wrote it, but refused to post it. OMG I JUST READ IT AGAIN AND I'M LAUGHING.
It's really terrible.
That's just the end of the scene -- the beginning is so much worse.
I CAN TASTE YOU. really.
That's just the end... the beginning of the scene is even worse.
It won't let me edit my comment... so... replying to myself.
That's just the end of the scene -- the beginning is so much worse.
I CAN TASTE YOU. really.
Both excerpts are really much, much better than you think. :)