"It was a dark and stormy
night......"
“It was a dark and stormy night,” read Mrs. Nightingale,
out of the
story book. Then she glanced at her watch. “Oh,
dear,” she said. “It’s
bedtime already! We’ll have to finish the
story tomorrow!”
“But, mom!” chorused Jeffrey and Johnny, the
Nightingale twins.
“It’s time for bed, if you go to bed right now, I’ll
finish the story
tomorrow night,” Mrs. Nightingale said.
“Okay,”
said the twins resignedly. Mrs. Nightingale kissed each on the
forehead, then left the room that Jeffrey and Johnny shared.
“Hey,”
whispered Johnny, “What do you think happens in the story?”
“I dunno,”
replied Jeffrey.
“I think it’s a dark, stormy night and a monster comes
to someone’s room,
and they get scared and run away and the monster follows
them,” said Johnny.
“Well, I think that a vampire comes while people
are camping and they have
to run away with their stuff,” replied
Jeffrey.
“You copied me! Tell a different story!” yelled
Johnny.
“Be quiet!” scolded Jeffrey, “You don’t want Mom to here
us! Well, okay.
A monster comes and steals a little child, and
then her mom finds out. So
her mom has to go find her and scare away
the monster. But then, she says
the monster can stay at their house,
because all the monster wanted was a
friend.”
“That’s lame!”
remarked Johnny, “It’s not scary at all!”
“Yes, it is! The
monster’s scary!”
“No, it’s not!”
“Yes, it
is!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
At that time, Mrs.
Nightingale came in and switched on the light,
brightening the darkened
room.
“What’s going on here?” she asked sternly.
“He. . .”
they chorused.
“One at a time!”
“Well, Jeffrey got mad ‘cause
I called his story lame,” said Johnny.
“What story?” asked Mrs.
Nightingale.
“Well, we were thinking of scary endings to the story,
‘cause we couldn’t
fall asleep, and we didn’t know what was gonna happen,”
answered Jeffrey.
“Well, to settle this, I’ll read a little more of the
story,” said Mrs.
Nightingale, and began to read.
“It was a dark
and stormy night, and the dinosaurs roamed, looking for
prey,”
The
boys looked at each
other and shrugged.