4 comments

Fiction Teens & Young Adult

My car comes to a stop in front of my childhood home. The cold night air swirls around my car, it felt good to be home. Collage was hard and I had had a hard semester. I step out of the car, the Christmas lights from the house helping me see. I couldn't believe it was only six days until Christmas. I take my bags out of my car, smiling as a snow flake lands on my cheek. I walk up the drive way and to the front door. But before I can get there the door swings open reveling the stout figure of my ageing mother.

"Dally," she exclaims, wrapping me in a hug while my dad came and took my bags from me.

My real name was Dallas. Dallas Maria Lexington but for as long as I could remember everybody had called me Dally.

Mom brings me into the house. It is exactly like I remembered it. With the big fire place and kitchen, the tea on the kettle, not to mention the Christmas tree and holly.

Mom brings me to the table and thrusts a cup of tea into my hands.

"How was the trip Dally." she asks while dad sits down beside her.

"It was good." I reply while looking around. "Were are Mark and Jensen?"

Mark and Jensen were twins and my little brothers. They were thirteen years old and seven years younger than me.

"Oh, I sent them to bed, its nearly midnight you know." says mom with tired eyes.

That reminded how tired I was. "Well I will talk to you guys tomorrow." I say with a yawn, standing up.

"Night Dally." mom and dad say as I walk out of the room and down the hall and into my bedroom.

I change into warm pajamas and lay down in my bed and its only a few seconds before I fall asleep.

The next morning I am woken by the sound of someone running into a wall, then someone loudly swearing followed by mom yelling, "That's another dollar for the swear jar Mark."

I give a little laugh and sit up. I look out my window the sun was shining brightly and it had snowed while I slept leaving everything to look like a winter wonderland.

I get out of bed and put on some clothes and begin to walk out of my room. Except when I walk out of my room and step into the hallway I feel ice cold water fall on top of me. I give a slight scream and look up to see a empty bucket dangling upside down above me.

That's when the thought occurs to me. How could I have forgotten?

When ever a family member comes back from a trip or from wherever they were away at, it is customary to give them a little prank as a wake up call.

I then see Jensen's face come around the corner. "Good morning Dally, I see you have taken a little shower."

Then Mark shows up with a grin, "Dally, your almost too easy."

"Good one." I say, before going back into my room to change.

The rest of the morning went by uneventfully, not until the afternoon did things really get fun.

"Get on a jacket Dally." Called Mark going into the garage.

"Why?" I ask suspiciously.

"Were going four-wheeler racing."

My face lights up "Oh it is so on!"

I grab a jacket and head into our large garage.

I head into the garage to find dad putting gas in my rusty four-wheeler.

"It looks good." Dad says after a minute patting my four-wheeler. "You be safe out there."

"Will do." I reply.

Mark, Jensen and me all back our four-Wheeler's out of the garage.

I look over at the country lanes surrounding our house, the last time I went four-wheeler racing was months ago.

Four-wheeler racing was something me aand my brothers had been doing for years. We had made a track and made some simple rules which were: You can cus, and you can to anything to win exept run another person over.

We all lined up at the start of the track, snow lightly falling on us.

"On my mark." Shouted Jensen. "ONE TWO THREE."

Our engines sounded and we were off. Mark cut ahead off me and spit snow into my face.

"Oh it is so on!" I shout at him.

All three of us were off, swerving threw curves, cutting each other off. The wind was in my hair and face making me wide eyed and red nosed, but I loved it and when the track came to an end I beat Jensen but a good couple inches, making me laugh and him scowl.

The next few days went by in a whirl wind with last minute touches for Christmas and more presents being put under the tree. Then finally Christmas arrived and I was awoken by a pounding on my door.

"Get up Dally its Christmas." Shouted Mark.

I didn't need to be told twice I hoped out of bed and ran into the living room with Mark and Jensen.

Jensen went to pull mom and dad out off bed while me and Mark went looking for our presents.

Finally Jensen got mom and dad out of bed and we were joyfully opening presents. The morning went by wonderfully until there was a bunch of wrapping paper on the ground.

"You three pick up the wraping paper, while I go start breakfast." said mom standing up.

"Alright." said Mark with an evil grin, who picked up the wrapping paper and scrunced into a ball and threw it a Jensen, once mom had turned her back. Jensen then threw one at me, and I threw one at Mark and then there were wrapping paper snowballs flying everywhere. That is until mom sharply told us to stop. And I did stop, but not before I threw one more at each Mark and Jensen.

November 27, 2020 02:24

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4 comments

Ramon Martensen
23:14 Dec 02, 2020

Hello Anastasia, I really like how you portray the coziness of returning home. The dynamics made me smile on several occasions. There are two pieces of advice I could give to make it even better. The first is about rhythm. You use a lot of sentences of the same length. Try to vary a bit, it will give the story more swing. The second is about the structure. I could sense the family dynamics very well through the story, but perhaps you could find a way to integrate them through a build-up of sorts. Now, at times it feels a bit like a litera...

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Anastasia Smith
21:54 Dec 11, 2020

Thank you so much and I see what you mean about varying the sentence length and story structure. I will definitely keep your advice in the back of my mind when writing future stories.

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Black Raven
21:41 Dec 02, 2020

I like it. It gets a little bit repetitive in the beginning with the words 'my car' and 'hard'. The second not that much, but a bit since it was used both times in the same sentence. Also in, "I grab a jacket and head into our large garage. I head into the garage to find dad putting gas." It's a whiff repetitive with the 'I head into the garage' part since you already said it previously. Apart from that, it's honestly good. Maybe some typos which I can't remember. I liked how you described the setting and the characters.

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Anastasia Smith
21:58 Dec 11, 2020

Thank you and I am so glad you enjoyed the story. I see what you mean about it being repetitive and I will defiantly need to keep a look out for that in the future.

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