Oct 15, 2023 -- Spooky/Scary bedtime story

Carrie Keiser 

A Bedtime Story

Little Frank N Monster, was all tucked up in his cozy bed, his Mummy said she'd be right up to read him his favorite bedtime story, The Night the Humans Came to Town.

Story Slingers

Myrna Flynn

October 14, 2023

Halloween Hazards

The children were all tucked in, waiting for Grandma Maggie to tell them a bedtime story. They since it was night before Halloween, wanted a scary and spooky story. 

Her story started, "Janice and her friends, Jeremy, Betty, Joe, Alice and Danny, stepped out the door on Halloween, they gazed at the moon in awe. There was a wide fiery red band around the full moon, making it look twice as big as normal."

Betty said, "Wonder what caused the moon to develop that ring?"

Joe said, "I have no idea but it looks like blood."

Alice stated, "There is no way it could be blood.'

Jeremy broke in with, "Come on let's get busy filling our bags."

They all took off running to houses saying, "Trick or treat!" No one noticed that Janice was no longer with them. She had stopped to tie her shoe. When she stood up, she found her friends had seemingly vanished.

Janice Lawson was a victim of what might happen to the unsuspecting participants celebrating this day of ghost and goblins and other unholy creatures. It happened to her. 

What she did not realize was that she was the one who had vanished. She was trapped in an underground dungeon. All around her were demons, witches and underworld monsters. 

Terrified that she was doomed. How could she ever escape? She was down in a pit, surrounded by monsters.

Then shr remembered she had her small Book of Mormon and her CTR ring. She took them out of her jacket pocket, held them up and faced her captors. The articles stunned the unholy mob.

Her path to freedom was prayer to her Heavenly Father. She knew that He would open the way out. With guardian angels alongside her, she departed and was soon safely home.          

Grandma Maggie said, "Goodnight and sweet dreams."

STORY SLINGERS

prompt: scary bedtime story

Daren Flynn 

10-15-23

GRANDPA'S MIDNIGHT RIDE

Listen my children

And you shall hear,

Of the midnight ride

Of your Grandpa dear.

It was freezing cold.

Snow blowing.

So I could not see,

Where I was going

I thought I saw 

A big Sasquatch 

So I closed my eyes

'CauseI could not watch

The road was slick,

Covered with ice.

When the tractor slid,

I corrected twice.

The truck spun left, 

The trailer right.

And I held my breath, 

To deal with my fright.

Then I woke up.

Though just a dream,

To me, even now, 

Real is how it seemed.

Just Before Halloween

Flynn Family Story Slingers 

29 October 2023 

Enough to Scare a Dad

by Cary Holmquist

As usual with these kinds of memoirs, I probably will get details wrong about this.  But then it is my return challenge to any challengers to provide their own, truer version.  So there! 

And there we were, on this break-neck tour of Washington, D.C., trying to get in as many of my favorite attractions as possible—and I had a loooong, ambitious list of favorites and then even more wishes.  It was 2005 and our four kids were still little, but I hoped most of them would be able to remember some of the sights we were seeing.  Why parents think this is possible or a good thing is a mystery that comes with the job of being parents.  Growing pains, I guess.

Just to add some more good intentions, I invited my parents so they could maybe recall some of the break-neck weekends we had in DC when the conditions were that I was the child and THEY were the kid wranglers.  And just to turn it into as an authentic blast-from-the-past for Mom and Dad, we co-opted another of their grandchildren, a nephew of mine, so there were five children in all, which was the kid tally for most of the childhood trips I had to DC.  Five Holmquist kids, all in a row.  That even worked out for the count:  three boys and two girls, just like Mom and Dad’s own family back in the 1960s and 1970s.   So, in all for this particular trip, there were nine of us in the party.

We were determined to use public transportation for all of our touring around.  This was also out of necessity, since it was so hard (and expensive) to find a car rental that would suit our group—which was too big for most cars or SUVs and even vans, but we were too small for a bus, of which DC has many, having so many promoted tours going on.  Seats for nine.  Part of the public transportation included the bus ride from Dulles airport and it was a killer.  Okay…no one died, but it was brutal and uncomfortable.  There were not enough seats, due to all the stranger passengers and the way was long with at least one transfer.  All the swinging around corners, even while I was standing, holding on to a pole the entire way, was nauseating.   Oh, yeah, nearly 3,000 miles by air and then the last 20-plus miles by city bus is what got to me….  

We decided on going in late May because kids were nearly out of public school by then anyway—not much interruption in their academic year—as if I cared about that anyways.

And to get from Montana to Virginia by air, May is a good time to fly standby, which is a (supposed) benefit to being an airline employee.   That means, the flights we took needed to have space available for us.  Which we managed to somehow squeak by on stand by all the way without getting “bumped.”  

It also meant that we could take advantage of the nation’s capital’s fairly extensive metropolitan subway system.  Even so, getting a reasonably priced hotel to a nearby subway stop was a huge challenge and we ended up trekking about a mile overland to achieve that.  The rain we encountered in May tended to be in the middle of the day, rather than at the ends of the day when we were trooping across dirt footpaths some of the way, so I don’t recall mud being a specific additional inconvenience.

With the subways, we were often down and up the stairs and escalators that serve the subway stops.  And so, given the wide range of ages and physical conditions of our troop, it was often quite a long string of walkers.  This also included how strung out we could become while at museums and monuments.  

A notable exception to this was our LIMITED tour of the U.S. Capitol, which was undergoing some additional facilities construction at the time.  We had to stay in a fairly small group, of which we were the clear majority.  But elsewhere, we were often strung out, at times, as much as a block from end-to-end.  The youngest always at the first and the eldest always at the back of the pack.  

Mom and Dad were good sports about it, but they were getting tired out, since most of their days over the past couple of decades, they had been tucked into an eighteen-wheeler and only rarely out walking about.  And certainly not walking at the speeds generated by the energetic short legs of children ages six to 14.  They needed frequent breaks.  And it led to my Dad using a wheelchair provided by some of the museums.  

Somewhere in all of this, we were heading back to the hotel, which was the longest single stretch of our days, using the subway to get to whatever on-the-fringes hotel we had managed to find.  We did not have a particular method for getting on and off the subway, which was a definite downfall to our system.

We were trundling along on the subway car and I looked back to see where everyone was and it was then that I could not find Hokan.  Where was he?  I found Colleen and she could not see him either.  We asked the kids and no one could locate him.  We looked further in the cars and it seems that he was not with us.  Which meant that he was probably left behind at the stop where we had boarded.

The gut-punching dread of every parent slammed into us hard.  Why?  Why is Hokan not with us?  

Replaced by, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO TO FIND HIM?  And, that is only where the panic began.  And then the heart-racing, brow-sweating, adrenaline and cortisol and every other emotionally impactful reaction races ever faster than the subway, which has slowed down to a snail’s pace.  Suddenly our enemy.

And then the frantic praying, asking Heavenly Father to protect him and help us to race to find him.  This was our primary means of communication—prayer—since cell phones were far into the future and so not part of the process for us in this agonizing turn of events.

That was the immediate plan.  For everyone to continue on to the destination, in case Hokan boarded the next train and would remember where to get off well enough to meet us there soon.  While I would race back from the very next stop, across to the train going in the other direction to find him, praying for him to be waiting at the stop where we last recalled seeing him.  

The praying was a constant on my lips as my eyes scanned the passengers going to and fro at the stops and through the cars.   Why were these trains not faster?  And more of them scheduled?  Would that kid stay put?  Please, oh, please!   

There are so many horrifying things that can go on—wandering away in the crowds, getting on a wrong train or going on past our departure stop.  A stranger taking advantage of an obviously stray child, obvious because he looked lost and alone.

Please, oh, please!

Finally, the stop where we had started this nightmare train ride.  

And there he was.  Hokan was standing there, looking up at the reader-board lights that blinked out the schedules of departures.  He had stayed there, waiting for someone to come get him.  

Oh, blessed thanks!  We re-united, Hokan and me, and started on the next train to our departure point.  Meanwhile, Colleen and Mom and Dad and perhaps even his siblings were still frantic for word or sight of a rescue.  They had to endure additionally the length of our ride to the destination point.  

But reunite we did.  And our relief and gratitude for answered prayers was full and heart felt.  It had been one of the scariest episodes in my life.  It panics me to this day even to think of it.

When this incident was recalled recently, I thought to ask Hokan about it.  He recalled it very casually.  To him, it had been no big deal.  We were not separated long enough for him to panic.  And as a twelve-year-old, who was mercifully not accosted in any way, it was just another event in a long day of sight-seeing.  So what, no big deal….