Seven Days

    This writing sample came from a tiny, yet fun contest one of my favorite authors had posted on her blog. Sarah's trip to "Hickville" ended in a follow up display among the favorite entries, so it seems noteworthy enough to post. It's short, not so sweet, but a spiffy example of spontaneous inspiration.

Seven Days
By: Megan Butler

Seven days. She couldn’t believe it. Only seven days to go. Of course, the past twenty three days weren’t so easily survived either, but the final days served as the end. The unmistakable, surreal conclusion that it would all be over soon.

            Sarah could finally go home.

            “Now Sarah, it wasn’t that bad, was it?” Aunt Millie chirped from the driver’s seat of the 1986 station wagon. It jostled them around after rolling past every chip in the dusty lane.

            Sarah inconspicuously tapped the frame of her Aviators up the bridge of her nose to hide her disgust. “Of course not, Aunt Millie. That four hour walk through the farmer’s market should really do wonders for my calf muscles,” she mumbled, crossing her arms and kicking her legs up on the dashboard to keep them from sticking to the leather seat. It sure was a muggy mess in ninety-degree “Hickville”.

            Why are parents cruel enough to send their kid to the whacko relative’s house in No Man’s Land? Why did Sarah have to listen to a toothless man sputter about the real production of honey, bee vomit and all, while her aunt hounded her about picking out the right bell peppers? Like the stupid vegetable had the God-given power to motivate a change in Sarah's kitchen apathy.

            She knew she'd be washing the seeds out of that pepper anyway, because her parents had a life separate from her own. That life didn’t involve taking their kid with them to the Bahamas over summer break, so Sarah had to endure the redneck lifestyle of the country-loving hillbillies known as her isolated family. The outcasts.

            Sarah groaned. Those seven days couldn’t get here quick enough.