Welcome to Tuesday Test Day! Each Tuesday, I share a snippet from one of my stories, along with three options. To enter, guess which of the three options the snippet is from.
Post your answer in the comments before Sunday evening at 5 p.m. CT. (You may respond here or on my Facebook page). Each Monday, I will randomly draw a name from all the correct answers and that person will win a $5 Amazon Gift Card. Winners will be announced in the next Tuesday Test Day post.
Last week’s winner is…
Catrina Pomerleau
Congrats!! Please email me at Alicia@AliciaDean.com and I will send your $5 gift card. Thank you for playing!
(The correct answer was Poetic Injustice)
Which of the below stories is this snippet from?
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The jack-o-lanterns that I had un-artistically drawn faces on and placed on my porch had been smashed all over my front walk. The slime was now oozing between my toes. I looked up in time to see two young boys, one wearing a yellow raincoat, hightail it down the street. I followed and saw them disappear into a house at the end of the block. Mitch Blakely’s house.
I banged on his door, more loudly than he had on mine.
“Priscilla?” His eyes were wide as he opened the door. His gaze raked my body and I realized what I must look like–hair half wild, robe thrown over still-damp flesh, my feet orange with pumpkin guts. “Good God, what happened?”
“Your son,” I screeched. “Your son is what happened!”
“My son? What did he do?”
“What the hell’s going on?” A voice behind me spoke. I turned to find Tim and Sadie Coen. They had a son about the same age as Mitch’s…pre-teen or barely teen, I wasn’t sure which. “We saw the boys run into the house like the hounds of hell were after them.”
“Your sons were spying on me.” My look encompassed all three of the inept parents. “I caught them in the tree outside my bedroom window. And I believe they smashed pumpkins all over my sidewalk.”
Mitch’s face tightened and he leaned back into the house. “Levi! Get out here this second. You and Spencer.” The boys appeared and Mitch corralled them out onto the porch. “Miss Beaumont claims you were staring in her window. And that you vandalized her house with pumpkins.”
“It wasn’t vandalis—” Levi began, then clamped his hand over his mouth when his friend jabbed him in the ribs.
“Spencer,” Tim said. “What’s going on?”
Spencer was thin with reddish bangs that hung so low I couldn’t see his eyes. He sighed and pulled his hand from behind his back. In it, he held a magazine. “It wasn’t vandalism. It was sort of symbolic. You know, for Priscilla Pumpkin.”
My blood froze at the same time heat suffused my entire body. The boy flipped open the magazine to a centerfold. The woman wore nothing except a witch’s hat and a pair of iridescent black and orange lace panties. Bits of pumpkin rind and pulp were spread all over her body.
I don’t know how the picture had ended up in this magazine, this day, because it was taken fifteen years ago. I knew, because it was me.
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SMASHING PUMPKINS from…
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Have fun and Happy Halloween!
Author Alicia Dean 