Bethany gazed at the picture of her four children that sat on the edge of her soon-to-be vacated desk, smiling in relief; she hadn’t been able to give them the time and attention they needed, and had been leaning too much on Eloise and Andrew to wrangle the twins, Chuckie and Ducks.
It had been a long time – over a decade now – since her first-and-best husband, Joseph, had mysteriously disappeared, and she had been at this soul-sucking job since that time. The temporary insanity of loneliness and fear had resulted in an intense, but brief marriage to a man that she had met on the job, and also her slightly spooky twin girls.
Bethany laughed out loud: Joseph and the girls would have gotten along perfectly.
Staring at the hard copy of her fifth revision to the grant proposal she had been working on for Director Mabrey, at the blood red edits that ran heavier than the black characters of the actual typed document, she began to methodically tear it into tiny pieces of confetti.
She’d landed the new job, a bump in pay, at an organization that believed in and delivered support for family and life balance and was well aware of Director Mabrey’s issues, and had been given a full six week’s break before she had to start in her new position.
© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2022)
The challenge? Write a story in 6 sentences, no more & no less, and if you’d like, share your creation or just visit and comment on others’ ideas, with GirlieOnTheEdge, Denise. The prompt is “CONFETTI”, and here’s where you join the party: Six Sentence Stories
Valley of the Trolls 
The ‘soul-sucking job’ gave me shivers of recognition, and I thoroughly enjoyed the tearing up of the proposal into confetti. i hope she spread it over the Director’s desk and into his filing cabinet and secret coffee and biscuit store! But I also love the warmth of the family description of her first husband and how he would love the ‘slightly spooky twins’. And Joseph only ‘disappeared’. Am I allowed to hope…?
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Disappeared 14 is posted, so it answers some of your questions.
And yes, Bethany does what some might only dream of…Lol!
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I love that she ripped to to pieces before she left. My kind of petty, some places just deserve that. I am very happy for that character.
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Get ready for the next episode…cherry on top of the sundae! To be posted late Friday…
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Six Weeks?! Perfect number to attend to all manner of things including getting to the bottom of some mysteries happening right under her nose. New job is step in right direction!
Enjoyed the ” blood red edits”. (I wield a red pen my own self 😉)
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Looking forward to more… and more… 🙂
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❤
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You can wrangle kids? That’s a new one on me!
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Yes…they’re a bit more challenging than livestock.
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This story has some eerie undertones.
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Yes indeed!
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I am glad to hear she got a better job.
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Six weeks might be enough time to find her missing son and get the twins wrangled. Might. We can hope.
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Still aiming for a happily ever after, but the prompts present a challenge, for sure. 😊
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Not sure where this is going, Liz, but I’m along for the ride.
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Patience, Doug. Another installment comes Fri/Saturday. 😉
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Patience is a card game, not a viable option for me. 🙂
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🦔🙊🦔😂
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