Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

The day Mary Thrupp fell into the ditch.

All the kids went to the park and Mary Thrupp tagged along. The favourite bit of the park was the untidy, muddy patch along the drainage ditch, and with their respective Mothers' pleas of 'Don't get dirty' still ringing in their ears, off they went. Mary tagged along.

A rather sombre six year old, with straight lank mousy hair cut with a fringe, Mary peered out through her hospital issue spectacles. She was dressed in a faded cotton print frock and an old hand-knitted cardigan. A bedraggled doll was tucked firmly under her arm.

Mary stood on the side of the ditch pretending to let dolly dive into the imaginary water. She went through a routine of swinging the doll back and forth when suddenly the momentum carried her forward and Mary flew through the air and landed with a muddy squelch at the bottom of the ditch.
She slowly got up and then howled. Her front was covered in sticky mud. The lenses of her glasses were two solid brown circles. The older girls hauled Mary up out of the ditch, rescued a muddy doll, and took her home.

It took seven baths to get her clean.

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