By Melanie E.

I feel like writing something today, so here we go. An open ++fiction page, a keyboard, and a little bit of time. What can we come up with?

-==-

I wasn't mad, at least not exactly. I was surprised, yes, and upset, sure, but "mad" would require a level of situational comprehension I simply wasn't capable of at the moment.

"It was an accident." Jimmy said, with an emphatic seven-year-old nod.

"Promise," Jenny said, nodding right along with her twin brother.

"But... but..." I looked at my youngest siblings, then back at the remains of my PlayTendo 360. "How did you make it EXPLODE?!" I gingerly reached out and pulled a sliver of what had been one of my favorite games out of the wall behind the now-ruined television, then worriedly looked back at my brother and sister in case either of them had somehow managed to get sliced to bits and we just hadn't noticed yet. It was a relief to see that neither of them were hurt, though the more time I spent looking at the damage they'd caused the more it became likely they'd both be seeing some retribution in the near future.

"Jake at school told me that if I took the fan off it it would stop being loud," Jimmy whined, giving me a pathetic tear-streaked look. "We couldn't open it up, so we stuck a marker in the fan to stop it and it was quiet for a bit, then it started screaming and then it blew up."

"We just wanted to make it better," Jenny added, looking just as distraught.

Mom and dad were gonna be pissed when they saw this, and I for one wasn't about to be there to see it.

"Where's was Marilyn anyway?" I asked them, since even with her many shortcomings our cousin-slash-babysitter usually did a decent job of preventing the Terrible Twosome from getting into this much trouble.

"She was on the phone with gramma in the kitchen."

"Of course she was," I muttered, adding another name to the list for vengeance. That was where she was at the moment as well, still oblivious to the disaster the twins had caused in the living room. Still, with any luck she would be adult enough to call the hospital if one of them were to get hurt. With that knowledge I started for the front door.

Stop.

If she hadn't responded to what had to be an awful racket and screams when that thing had blown up....

I walked into the kitchen, and the brats were wrong. Cousin Marilyn wasn't on the phone; she was asleep at the table, a bottle of wine she wasn't supposed to have next to her and two more empties on the floor.

Okay, now I definitely knew who I was going to punish for all this, though I had a phone call to make first. It took two tries before Mom picked up, but as soon as I heard the click of her answering I didn't even wait for her to say anything before I started in.

"Mom, get home right now; Marilyn's in the kitchen passed out drunk, and the Twins... well, they're the twins," I grumbled.

Mom's panicked gasp quickly turned into a strained sigh as my words sunk in. "Well... shit. I'll be there in fifteen. Can you stay with the twins hon?"

"I'd really rather not."

"Too bad. Thanks," she said, then hung up before I could say anything else.

My thoughts echoed her words perfectly though.

Shit.

-==-

Welp, that's it for now. Not much? Nope! The end? Probably not, but maybe. TG? Nnnnot right now, but could be the start of such a story I guess; I can think of several plots that could erupt from this that could make it so. Regardless, this is what I wrote, so this is what you get. Hope y'all enjoyed it, and maybe if I feel like writing more later I'll expand it, who knows!