Episode 3
Mutant Fruit Fly
Welcome to One Word Writing Prompts, Episode 3. Basically, your instructions, dear Reader, should you wish to participate, are to simply use the word below as a prompt to write something from it. And, if you would like, please feel free to post your creative output in the comments, and with your permission, I might share them in a later post. Have fun. Be creative.
Just found your blog. Cool idea. I decided to go comic book with this, for some reason. 3 am does that to you…
Mom said I looked like a mutant when I shot out of her thirtysome years ago. A wet ball of pudge and surprise. ‘I didn’t know what to expect’, she said. ‘But that wasn’t it.’ Truth is, I looked like all the other little creatures in the maternity ward. Just your average unplanned pregnancy. A lucky break for me that something else broke nine months earlier. She took it in stride, my mother. Her policy was honesty. She did what was right. Dropped out of school and learned to take night shifts. She wasn’t great at it all, but she knew her responsibilities. But I think she never got over that initial shock–’that thing came out of me.’ I guess it would be shocking, not that I would know. I’ll never have to. I wasn’t built for passengers.
So, you understand I didn’t feel guilty telling my mother. It was almost an inside joke between us, that there was something wrong from the beginning. A mother’s instinct. I thought she’d laugh. Not take it so… seriously. She didn’t laugh. She didn’t see the humor in it–me actually being a mutant after all. I gave her the two biggest shocks in her life. First my existence and then my mutation. The second one did her in. I guess we can’t all be jokers.
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