Fall Frenzy Writing Contest 2022

Kaitlyn Sanchez from Math is Everywhere and Lydia Lukidis are hosting a Fall KidLit Writing Contest! Just pick one of the photographs on the contest rules page and follow the instructions. Be sure to follow Kaitlyn and Lydia's blogs for updates!

Here is my entry:

Halloween- Credit: Brian Wangenheim for Unsplash

Not a Spook

Tibia created marvelous mud pies,

Cartwheeled through cobwebs,

And rolled in rotten leaves.

She paraded through pig pens and swam through swill.

Tibia

was a smidge

smudged.

It suited her.

Until she wasn’t invited to the All-Spooks Halloween Hootenanny.

“You’re not a spook,” Witch Bru pointed out, “and you’re filthy. Even Zombie tries to clean up.”

“I’ll bathe,” Tibia said.

“Still not a spook,” Bru said. “Not a monster,

not a ghost,

not a ghoul.

NOT invited.”

“Maybe I’m a witch,” Tibia said.

“You can’t even spell ‘spell.’” Bru scoffed.

Tibia would show her. She’d concoct a potion.

Nightshade root and hemlock sap? Easy-peasy.

Frog? Not-so-much.

She finally caught one (getting even grimier) but couldn’t bear to put it in her potion.

“I don’t have the heart to be a witch.” Tibia sighed.

Maybe they’d let her into the hootenanny if she were clean – even if she wasn’t a spook.

Tibia filled the bathtub and climbed in, turning the water chocolate brown.

She scrubbed, climbed out, looked down, and discovered something amazing.

She didn’t have the heart to be a witch because she didn’t have a heart – at all.

She was a skeleton.

And nothing is spookier than that.