Progressive Story 1

I have a fun challenge for you.  What if we start a progressive story… I just did a writing exercise from that box you gave me where I started with three random sentences and let it take me wherever it may.  And this is what I got.  What I thought would be fun is if you add to it, however much you want, and we keep it going for a while.  If you want to try any idea generators, there are tons online if you do a google search and one I kind of liked is at shortstoryideas.herb.me.uk/

Ok, so here it is:

I love the way she said balloon.  She said it as if she were blowing bubbles.  

You see, I’m babysitting for my big brother.  He’s five years older than me, but we’ve always been really close.  Though we’ve always been close, that’s not to say I’ve ever babysat his two year old Lacie before, and I was slightly terrified at the prospect.  They’ve never left Lacie.  (Overprotective parents.)  And all I can think is, they must be pretty desperate tonight.

Or he must be.

Nevertheless, my fears seem to have been unfounded, at least as far as it concerns Lacie.  She’s a chatterbox--talking is what she does.  Most of what she says makes no sense at all, but she doesn’t seem to mind how little I understand.  I only understood balloon because she made a wide gesture with her hands as she pronounced the word, lips forming a huge O.

I’m just glad she’s content to stand here and talk while I sit on the couch thinking about...  well, not about balloons.  I’m grateful I don’t have to put on a show, as I feared.  Or tell jokes, or dance, or otherwise entertain.  It’s the other way around--hmmm. I never would have guessed.

It’s a good thing too, because as I said, my thoughts are elsewhere.  My thoughts are on the last words my brother spoke to me on the phone earlier today.  These were the words:  “I cheated on my wife.  And it wasn’t the first time.”

Now, all I can think of as Lacie stands before me making funny faces, oinking, pulling on her piggy tails, turning upside down with her head on the floor and sticking both fingers up her nose, is poor Lacie.  How can my brother do that to her?  And he didn’t sound sorry at all.  In fact, he sounded a lot like he was going to go prowling the town tonight, looking for some woman, never mind that his wife was with him.

It was the tear in her dress that first set him off, he said.  He’d been out somewhere (obviously not with his wife since they’ve never left Lacie before), and he saw a woman walking by with a tear in her dress.  I guess that tear was in a place that caused his imagination to run a little wild.  He got her phone number and they’ve been corresponding ever since.  Same woman.

But this is what’s really weird.  He has her wear the same dress each time he sees her, with a different new tear in it every time.  If that’s not bizarre, then I don’t know what is.  And he admitted all of this as if it was just great stuff.  Like I said, we’ve always been close, and he’s never even remotely acted like this before.

Something is wrong… and I’m determined to find out what it is.