third campaign challenge: delicate tastes.

 *First of all, want to be a part of a fun contest? I'm celebrating 100 followers by hosting a little blogfest (open through Oct. 28) where we all dish about the hilarious things we wrote as children. There will be prizes!

Check it out!

Time to get our third challenge on! The guidelines:

Write a blog post in 300 words or less, excluding the title. The post can be in any format, whether flash fiction, non-fiction, humorous blog musings, poem, etc. The blog post should show:

• that it’s morning, 

• that a man or a woman (or both) is at the beach

• that the MC (main character) is bored

• that something stinks behind where he/she is sitting

• that something surprising happens.

Just for fun, see if you can involve all five senses AND include these random words: "synbatec," "wastopaneer," and "tacise."   (NB. these words are completely made up and are not intended to have any meaning other than the one you give them).

Are you ready for this? I know this wasn't a requirement, but it came out to 300 words exactly.
Here we go.

DELICATE TASTES

On June seventh, I woke up to my father slamming his hand print onto the foggy windshield. “Get up, Cameron!” he bellowed through the glass. “She’s here!” He darted from campsite to sand, and the squelch of his boots disappeared.

“Mughh. Fantastic.” That man and his turtle-watching.

“What did he say, Vijay?” I opened my eyes a slit. Phoolati smiled at me, her wooden spoon aloft.

“Oh, ugh!” I yanked a blanket up around my nose and mouth, but the fumes dripped down my throat, burned my eyes. There was no way I could go back to sleep.

“Open a window or get out,” my stepmother chirruped. “Your dad wanted wastopaneer, so that’s what we’re having.”

“In the bus?! It’s not even light.” I untangled myself and stumbled through our synbatec apartment, hand over mouth. The top of my head brushed a path through the painted eggshells Phoolati had hung from the ceiling.

“You used to love wastopaneer, Vijay,” she said. “It’s a tacise blend of our cultures.” She rubbed her finger over a suspended eggshell.

I grabbed my sweatshirt and unlatched the door. “It’s Cameron, and that was before you changed the recipe.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d started calling it “waste-of-paneer” behind her back. Not that it ever got a laugh.

After kicking against the roots and pebbles of our campsite, my bare feet relished the cool scrape of pre-dawn sand. I found my dad where the tide had washed out, hunched over a nest. May as well help. The light from his headlamp twitched and I noticed something red.

“Dad?” I choked down some wastopaneer-flavored bile. “What are you doing?”

“What’s wrong, Vijay?” he asked, holding up an egg and a flipper. “Don’t you like the new recipe?”

***

 

If you likey, and you don't think I've completely gone off the deep end (sea turtles are my favorite animal, promise. I don't know what got into me), please go votey! I'm number 66 this time. Thanks! 

**edited to add**

DISCLAIMER!
No actual sea turtles were harmed in the writing of this story. :)