I’ve just posted the story I wrote for today (as part one) but as it doesn’t fit the prompt and I had one from a while back that did, I thought I’d share that too…
Her version of events
Inspector Robert Southey stared gravely into the little blonde girl’s eyes. She finally crumpled and burst into tears.
Between sobs she said, “how… was I… supposed to know… that I wasn’t to eat the porridge? There wasn’t anyone there. It was going cold. I… it just looked so yummy and I didn’t want it to go to waste. I hardly touched the two big bowls. One was too hot and the other one was too cold, and… and…”
The policeman scribbled in his notebook then looked back at the child. “And what did you do next?” he asked in his deep Cumbrian accent.
The girl took a deep breath, sinking slightly in her seat. “Well, I’d been walking in the woods for ages before I saw the house… and was tired… and so I went to sit down. The first two chairs weren’t comfy at all but the third one was perfect. It was soft and just the right size…” she paused, “but then it broke. It wasn’t my fault, honestly it wasn’t. Well, I didn’t mean…”
“Mmm,” the Inspector said, jotting down her words as they tumbled out, “and then?”
“Well, then I got really sleepy. I tried the beds but it was same thing; one was too hard, the other too soft but the third was perfect and before I knew it, I had drifted off. I must have been asleep for a while when I heard a lot of noise downstairs. Then a few seconds later, it sounded like a herd of elephants coming up the stairs, only it was a herd of bears.”
“Sleuth”, the Inspector interrupted, laughing at the irony of the word.
“Sorry?” the little girl looked up at him with piercing green eyes.
“A collection of bears is a sleuth, or sloth. Never mind. You were saying…”
“The little baby bear… and his mummy looked friendly but the big bear, the daddy, looked really angry so I jumped out of the bed, ran down the stairs and out of the front door. It was open, just as it had been when I got there. That’s when I bumped into the other policeman.”
Almost on cue, Inspector Southey’s colleague, Sergeant Keswick, who’d been in the next room taking statements from the witnesses, entered the room. The two men whispered to each other then turned to the girl.
The Inspector stepped forward to the table where she was sitting. “OK, Goldilocks. You’re free to go, but count this as a warning. We do not take theft or criminal damage lightly. And you’re lucky that you’re not facing breaking and entering charges.” At the last statement, Goldilocks looked horrified.
The Inspector continued. “I know. The door was open. But that doesn’t give you the right to walk in and help yourself.” He looked at his colleague, nodded, then continued. “If you trouble the Edwards again, they’ll undoubtedly want to press charges. They will, however, be sending you a bill for the broken chair.”
“Thank you, sir,” the girl said with a half-hearted smile, wiping away her tears with her sleeve as she left the room. Walking home, she wondered how she was going to tell her parents and how many chores she’d have to do to pay for the chair.
I wrote that story back in February 2009 and I remember it being fun to do. It just goes so show you that you don’t need to think of something original to be… well, original.
