#18
“Auntie! Please let me down!”
In the hours Aunt Beatrice left her there, one of the tethers that held Carolyn to the floor had come loose. Well, to be honest, she’d loosened it. At the time, she thought if she could just get free of the tethers, the magic would be broken and she’d float safely back to terra firma. But after the first one came free and she flew even higher, she’d become too frightened to remove the other.
“I see you’ve cut yourself halfway loose,” Beatrice cackled. “How do you feel?”
Carolyn did not feel good. She’d been rolling around among the rafters for hours, blown up to three times her normal size with one ankle tied to a pile of eight pound dumbbells under Auntie’s work table, and she wanted to get down. “I feel like I might puke,” she said.
“That’s good! I wonder what would happen if you hit one of those roofer’s nails?” Beatrice mused. “Do you think you’d pop a hole and fly all around my workroom?”
Carolyn’s eyes widened. “Please, Auntie. I’m sorry for what I said. I know you’re not a witch. I’m sorry I called you that.”
Beatrice fell into her rocker, convulsing with laughter. “Of course I’m a witch, you ninny! You’re up there because you called me an ugly old witch!”
Carolyn thought for a moment. “So which part did you object to?” she asked.
“I’m old. I’ll give you that one too. But I am NOT ugly!”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Will you please let me down?”
“Do you promise you’ll be a good girl and only say nice things to me from now on?”
“I promise, Auntie. I really truly do.”
Beatrice leapt out of her rocker and reached for her wand. “Okay, girl. I’m trusting you. Now hold still.” The old woman tapped her wand to the clothesline that was tied, at one end, to the dumbbells and, at the other end, to Carolyn’s fat little ankle. Then she took hold of it and muttered as she pulled. “Et cadere subtraxerim utilium. Et cadere subtraxerim utilium.”
Little by little, Carolyn felt her body returning to its normal proportions. As it did so, she sank lower and lower until her delicate feet landed gently on the wood floor of her Aunt’s workroom.
“You’ll never do it again?” Beatrice asked.
“No, Auntie. Never again.”
“You’re a liar.” Beatrice tapped Carolyn on the shoulder. “Ultra mendacium.”
“I’m a liar and everyone hates you,” Carolyn said. She gasped and covered her mouth with both hands.
“You won’t lie to me anymore,” Beatrice jeered. “For the record, I like you better this way.”
About Prompt-A-Day: The rules are simple. Every day, I generate a prompt using Story Shack’s awesome writing prompt generator. Then I set a timer for one hour. At the end of the hour, I post what I’ve got. Sometimes it’s decent. Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes I fail at the prompt. Sometimes I do okay. I do not edit, unless I find a typo, because I can’t help fixing those. Feel free to join in and post a link to your writing in the comments.