It's Surreal

This prompt was taken from the "Now Write!" book I mentioned on my Prompt page. It comes from Ms. Laurie Foos. This one is actually quite hilarious, and I encourage you to try it yourself, if only for poo and giggles.



Provide the following, as quickly as possible:

1. Any verb ending in -ing
2. A body part
3. An inanimate object

Write them down, or remember them. Ready?

DO NOT READ AHEAD UNTIL YOU HAVE YOUR WORDS!







Insert the words you chose into the following prompt:

"After a long day of (-ing word), he/she discovered that his/her (body part) had grown a/an (inanimate object)."

Begin your writing!




Mine were the following:

1. Driving
2. Arm
3. Fire Hydrant
Oh, my....


Laurie unlocked the door to her house, pushing the door in more with the weight of her slumping against it than with an actual push. She shuffled in, sighing with relief as she shut it behind her, welcoming the cool air that passed over her.Throwing her keys into the basket she kept on the small table in what passed for her foyer, she headed for the kitchen to get a glass of ice-water.

Laurie worked as a drug rep for a well-known pharmaceutical company. It was her job to drive from town to town, visiting all of the local doctors and pharmacies and talk to them about the wonderful benefits of the new and upcoming drugs the company produced. It wasn't a very lucrative job, but it paid the bills. And she was good at it. She was 32 years old, with long brown hair that fell in soft waves that people wanted to run their hands through. Her blue eyes held those of whomever she was talking to, and she was very persuasive. She knew how to use her sex appeal to her advantage. However, her job also had it's stresses. Today's stress had come from the traffic. Laurie was pretty sure she had spent more time in her car on the freeway today than actually talking to people. It didn't help that the temperatures outside were sweltering, the humidity something palpable. She had driven her small Honda Accord with the windows rolled all the way down. Her air conditioner had broken the previous Fall, and she had never gotten it fixed. That was the NUMBER ONE thing on her to-do list on her next day off now.

Traffic had been a nightmare. A log-hauling truck had overturned on the interstate, spilling it's load all over all lanes, both coming and going. As if that weren't enough, the logs had caused a total of sixteen vehicles to crash, ten of them being on her side of the road. Six people had died. Of course, it was one of the areas that had miles and miles between exits, so by the time she learned of it, it had been too late, and she was stuck. The radio in her car did not work, so she had not heard about it on any news reports. Replacing the radio was NUMBER TWO.

By the time she had reached the traffic backup, the accident had been mostly cleared, and traffic had been allowed to very slowly crawl through. What normally took her twenty minutes had taken three hours. Luckily, she had water and a granola bar in the car. She was pretty certain she would have died if otherwise. She had contemplated the money-making potential for someone just to walk up and down the road with a bunch of water.

She reached the kitchen, pulling her bra off along the way and tossing it onto the couch in the living room. Her nylons she had already tugged off while stopped in the traffic, bringing some very interested looks from the two young guys in the car next to her while she did. She had thrown the stockings into the back seat and winked at the boys.

She grabbed a glass down from the cupboard and got ice from the freezer. She filled the glass with water and downed it in three big gulps. As she filled the glass back up, she had an odd sensation from her arm. The upper part of her left arm tingled.. a cold sensation running through it. She drank the second glass more slowly, and the cold sensation got worse. She set down the glass and took a step back as she wiped at the cold arm. She noticed simultaneously that the floor was wet, and her shirt was wet, and not just with sweat. The sleeve  was soaked, and she seemed to have something lodged in her shirt. Water was all over the floor of the kitchen. Laurie did not remember spilling any water, but she had been so thirsty she could not be totally certain. She unbuttoned her shirt and removed it, and uttered a terrified scream as she revealed the source of her arm's discomfort.

Growing directly out of her arm sat what looked like a small fire hydrant. It was about two inches tall, but flexed, as a large skin tag or mole might. It was spewing water out of it's little top, like she had often seen on TV, usually accompanied by children frolicking. Laurie did not feel like frolicking. Instead, she fainted.