A Bit of Writing Prompt Fantasy
MAGIC
POTION LOTION
Knee high by the Fourth of July.
That’s how many strands of red licorice I had collected for my patriotic
installation at the campus art gallery. Now I needed materials in blue and
white and they had to come by the color naturally, I wasn’t allowed to paint
anything and I only had two hours left to finish the piece in time. I ran down
the hall of the dorm pounding on doors.
“Wake up! Get to the lounge! I need
help!”
“What do you want now?”
It was five o’clock in the morning
but my dorm mates were used to my ill-timed bursts of creative energy. They
dragged themselves down to the lounge. I looked at the sleepy hung-over
congregation of students and begged.
“Please, I need all your aspirin,
Tylenol, generic pain relievers—anything white.”
Some looked at me in alarm thinking
I would swallow all the pills to escape my fractious artistic mind. The rest
either smiled and ambled back to their rooms in search of white pills or
mumbled, “I don’t have any little white pills.”
I was known for my unique,
innovative art and if I didn’t deliver the art department would never ask me to
exhibit again. Now all I needed was some natural blue material and I needed a
lot of it because the installation had to be at least half my height or taller
to qualify.
I searched the village parks and
gardens for rocks in any hue of blue but only found white and pink stones. I
searched for blue flowers but only found red ones and some gnawed at yellow
corn cobs. I went fishing outside the village but only caught brown and silver
fish.
Not a blue fish in the water. Even the water
was a sad shade of gray.
I trudged back to campus. Turning a corner I came to the delivery dock
for a grocery story. There on the back of an opened trailer truck sat cases of
clear blue seltzer bottles that reflected the sun in crystal sparkles of light.
I
had to have them. I approached the man, eyed the bottles and rubbed my sweaty
neck.
“Hey, can I have three cases of
seltzer?”
“What? Yeah. I’m taking these to the
Piggly Wiggly. Go buy as many as you want.”
“No, wait. You have to give them to
me.”
The man turned away and continued
unloading the truck. I got closer and explained that my installation had to be
done in an hour and I wasn’t allowed to spend any money to buy materials. I had
to find everything I used in the structure. I’d collected all the licorice
strings from students on campus, going door to door in the dorms.
“Here,” the guy said as he scratched
his grizzled chin. “I have two cases of lotion that’s outdated. You can have
those.”
The lotion was white in clear
bottles. I needed something blue.
“No, you don’t get it. It has to be
blue.”
“So, paint the damn bottles. Paint
anything you can find blue. What’s the difference?”
“I can’t. I have to use materials
that are already the color I need. It has to be red, white and blue. And I only
have an hour left to finish.”
“Take it,” the man urged. “Trust me.
Just leave a window open and this will work.” He winked and continued his job.
Back at the gallery I arranged the
licorice in three piles and sprinkled them with the white pills. I opened the
bottles of lotion, and hearing the man’s voice in my head, “Trust me,” I poured
the white lotion around the piles and drizzled it up the sides. I shrugged and
opened the window.
In seconds a blue cloud undulated
like a sea monster and entered the room. A million blue butterflies fanned out
and hovered over the streams of lotion.
I ran outside to see where they had come from but all the butterflies
were inside now and the sky was clear. I strolled back to the gallery but
before I went through the door I saw a truck parked across the street. It was
the seltzer delivery man. He waved and saluted then drove away. A blue
butterfly hovered on his side view mirror.
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