Prompt: Write a story that incorporates the color yellow.
Warning: I'm not feeling super positive about this one, but I hopefully it's not totally unintelligible.
Mrs. Nelson, who lived across the street, grew poppies in her garden no matter the season. In the winter time she would carefully cover them with little individualized see-through tents, each with it’s own heat lamp casting it’s dull yellow glow across the white of the snow. I didn’t like going over there much, but Mom always said she was old and it was good for me to talk to adults, and sent me over once a month with a seasonal plate of cookies.
When I was little I used to leave them on the stoop and then run away, but when Mom caught me I stopped. The first time we met face to face all I could see where her large furry teeth. They were sort of yellow and brownish, like she had eaten too many caramel fudge brownies and they’d gotten stuck in there, and I couldn’t help but imagine that they tasted the same way. She’d smiled broadly at me with those big round teeth, and said, “So you’re the little girl whose been leaving these. I’m so glad to finally meet you.”
Her voice had sounded tinny and soft, like the way old ladies talk in movies, but sharper. I mumbled something and ran away, too afraid of the thought of wrinkles and death to stay and talk. She didn’t close the door for a long time, even after I had already crossed the street and slammed the door behind me. I saw her from my bedroom window looking out over the pansies and clutching the plate of cookies to her stomach.
“Why do we give her cookies when her teeth are so rotten?” I asked one time.
Mom just told me to shush and finish my broccoli.
The Halloween I was seventeen me and some friends decided to get high and sneak into Mrs. Nelson’s. Thomas was convinced she was running an opium den in there because of all the poppies and I was in love with Thomas so it made sense. The air had just begun to turn and the little individual tents had been put up. I remember tripping on a few and then laughing into my glove as the they’d gone flying, ripping the petals off nearby flowers. The back window was unlocked and I was shoved in first. Thomas hoisted me up to the windowsill, and I tried to pull myself over. But as I did, something snagged on my coat, and I tumbling head first in through the window. The bump knocked me out, because the next thing I could remember was sitting in the hospital with four stitches in my head and Mrs. Nelson smiling down at me with those big yellow teeth.
“There you are, Sweetie.” She’d said it as if I’d been lost. “There you are.”
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