I Spy
Kim Magowan

I spy, with my little eye, something orange. Colder, colder. Bunny, look under the bed. Warmer! Hot! That’s right, baby girl. Wait, what the heck? Shiny, uh huh. Definitely not Mommy’s. Someone else’s big girl pants. Don’t touch them! Yuck. Let’s wash your hands, Anna Banana. Want to learn a new word? Thong. Or lingerie. That’s a fancy word for big girl pants. By which I mean grown up pants. Let’s put these somewhere Daddy can see them. How about on top of his pillow? Let’s see how Daddy reacts. This should be interesting. This should be a funny joke.

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Kim Magowan’s Comments

I drafted “I Spy” on August 10, for SmokeLong Fitness. Ever since Grant Faulkner first turned me onto 100-word stories, I’ve been on an endless quest to write one. I’ve only pulled off about eight (Ellen, you published one of them, “The Spoon”). They’re so hard! They’re my pale, elusive unicorn. But this is one of them: a 100-word story was my end-goal from the first word. I was participating in SmokeLong Fitness (sidebar: every flash fiction writer should do SmokeLong Fitness! I love these workshops so much). Christopher Allen’s prompt that week was to write “something shocking.”

My concept here was for a woman to be making a shocking discovery in real time. She’s freaking out, but doing her best to keep her child from seeing her upset. Their “I Spy” game that leads to a bad discovery under her bed turns into another game, one that the daughter is involved in without having any clue what they’re playing.

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