From Rebecca Makkai's daily writing prompts on twitter (#365prompts)
Day 62: No one knows where this underwear in the living room came from. We just did laundry, and there it was, in the basket, but it's not ours. So...? Laundry at home, not a laundromat, so that's not an answer. No recent sleepovers for the kids, but even so, this is a big pair of granny panties with unicorns on them. Not likely to belong to pre-teen boys (no judgment, I'm just talking about the size here). It's quite disconcerting. Should we post it to NextDoor?
Day 63: Patricia admits, mid-dinner party, to believing in Bigfoot. "Look, when you find a pair of panties this big in your living room *and* there are the giant footprints outside, well, if it quacks like a duck...!" Argument ensued over the likelihood of Bigfoot's underwear choices or even wearing any at all - but not over his (her? their?) presumed existence. Hm.
Day 64: The same purple bicycle has been locked to a bike rack at the edge of campus since 1997. If you were observing it carefully, you'd notice the occasional shimmer in the air nearby, and suddenly you'd see a person where you're pretty sure nobody had been a moment ago. This person would invariably be dressed oddly, just a bit off the norm, as if they were a tourist who'd read about local customs but not quite gotten them right. Since the development of in-home fabric recyclers, it's gotten harder and harder to come by the old stuff. Thrift stores have had to go underground and museums have snapped up the best of what's left. Even so, visitors cobble an outfit together and find their way to the purple bike, for an adventure in the past.
Day 72: The genie who lives in the Arizona Iced Tea bottle is kind of trashy. Can't even keep track of their unicorn underwear, dammit.
Day 79: Hector's first Scrabble championship is off to a worrisome start. He thought he'd had it all figured out, studying the dictionary, learning all those words-that-aren't-really-words (come on, nobody says "za" for pizza, it's ridiculous, language is alive and all that but there are limits), working through the mental math of triple word scores... he's got this. And then. Well. Then he sits down at the board, makes respectful eye contact with his opponent (more on her later), and goes completely blank. Like, completely. Beyond blank. He draws his tiles and doesn't recognize a single squiggle on them.
Day 85: The Botanic Garden benefit ends in bloodshed. Women run, screaming, tripping over their heels and sprawling, hats flying off, pearl necklaces flying apart. A deep voice laughs: it is the plant at the heart of the mayhem, a "new" species the Garden Club was so proud of, a relative of the Venus fly trap but oh, they did not realize that they would be the flies!
Day 89: After all these years, Mia is finally learning to play the accordion. Her grandfather left it to her, and it's been in the closet, gathering dust and layers of guilt, ever since.
