Why Mints are Bossy — Part One

This blog definitely needs more of my writing on it, so I decided to share an eight page story I wrote for my IEW class. It’s not my best, but I had a lot of fun writing it and I thought you guys might enjoy reading it.

I’m only posting three pages of the story today, because posting all eight would make this post rather long.

Anyway, enjoy!

Why Mints are Bossy

      The TV room smelled of sweat, agony, and food. There were gray walls, a crumb-filled forest green carpet, and a bear head snarling ferociously at the occupant of the room. A dark-haired girl named AJ sat cross-legged on the floor, a black Wii remote gripped tightly in her right hand. She leaned intently toward the flat screen TV in front of her, a wild look in her eyes as she swung her remote, making the green-clad warrior on the TV wave his sword.

      “Hiyah!” she shouted, grinning savagely as her avatar ripped through hoards of enemies. “The pigs don’t stand a chance,” AJ cackled. Indeed, there were piles of piggy corpses littering the digital ground behind her character.

      Out of habit, she reached for the plastic box of powdery, sweet, melt-on-the-tongue dinner mints that was lying on the carpet beside her. Slaying inferior swine with one exceptionally skilled hand, she rifled through the mint-filled container with the other. Out from the depths of that sugar-coated box, AJ withdrew a tiny square mint, no bigger than her middle finger’s nail. It was light pink in color, like the hue of a delicate ballerina’s dancing slipper. With her eyes glued to the screen, the girl raised her hand (the one that was clutching the mint, of course; why would she eat a Wii remote?) to her mouth and prepared to feast. Sugary blood would be shed.

      Suddenly, a squeaky, high-pitched voice shrieked, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

      AJ jumped and glanced around nervously, pausing her video game. Who had made that sound? Either someone else was in the room or all of that video gaming was messing with her head. She wouldn’t be the first in her family to go bonkers from gaming. Her older brother often claimed to be hearing music from Smash Bros. when there was no game in the area to play the sound.

      “Hello?” she called timidly. When there was no response, she slowly turned back to her game.

      AJ was about to place the dinner mint in her mouth when the disembodied voice cried, “Please don’t eat me! If you let me go, I promise I’ll help you sometime in the future!”

      She paused the game again and glared angrily around the room. “Who are you? Why are you doing this?” she snapped at thin air.

      Randomly, the video game she was playing inexplicably unpaused itself. In her haste to murder the wild pigs that were charging her avatar, AJ dropped the pink dinner mint, and the odd, shrill voice was all but forgotten . . .

      The pink dinner mint had had a close encounter with death, and it was a miracle that he had survived. Or was it? Was it truly just luck that had saved him from the cavernous mouth of the human girl? As some may have guessed, it was the mint’s own smarts and cunning that had enabled him to escape. His plan, which was rather ingenious, I must admit, had been thought up in roughly two seconds.

      Step one of the Ingenious Plan: yell something. Humans do not expect to hear voices when there are no other humans in the room.

      Step two of the Ingenious Plan: yell again. He needed to distract the human long enough to unpause her game.

      Step three of the Ingenious Plan: use telekinesis to press the button on the girl’s Wii remote, thus unpausing her game. Hopefully, she would be so caught up in fumbling for the gaming device that Minty (for that was his name) would be able to slip away unnoticed.

      Luckily, Minty’s brilliant plan had worked splendidly, and while the human girl was lunging wildly for her controller, he had slipped out of her grasp. Then he had scampered across the carpet, and was currently cowering beneath the recliner.

      He stayed underneath the chair for several weeks, watching AJ with his keen little eyes. “I promised to help her,” he repeated to himself, “and I will. Mint’s promise, scout’s honor, blah blah blah.” So he hid beneath the chair, searching for the right time to burst out and help the human.

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That wraps up part one of Why Mints are Bossy!

After my IEW teacher read the whole story, so told me that she would never look at dinner mints the same way. :D

Ugh . . . my homeschool co-op starts tomorrow. I’ll have to see people, and talk to them! *dies*