Instant Fiction: The Cookie

Jereme came home from school and threw his backpack on the couch. He kicked off his shoes and sat himself down in front of the television and began playing a video game.

"Mom, Can I have a snack?" Jereme asked,

"Sure, you can have an apple or an orange!" mom replied energetically from the kitchen.

"Mom, by 'snack', I meant 'can I have a cookie?'" Jereme clarified for his Mom.

"No, you can't have a cookie, I said you can have an apple if you would like," Mom replied.

"I don't want an apple, I want a cookie" thought Jereme to himself. He turned back to play his game. Mom was in the kitchen cleaning and preparing to start cooking dinner. As Jereme played his game, he glanced over to the clock. It was 3:30 now and dinner wasn't until 6:00. He figured he still had time to work his mother over for a cookie. As he continued playing his game, he began to fabricate in his mind his plan of action to get that cookie.

"Hey Mom," he called, "I have a quick joke for you!"

"Ok," his mother said, "I can handle a joke."

"Ok, what does my tummy and a cookie have in common?" he asked

"Oh brother." she groaned under her breath. "I don't know; what do they have in common?"

"Well, my tummy wants a cookie in it, and a cookie wants to be in my tummy." Jereme began laughing, "They both want the same thing!" He continued to watch mom to see if she would laugh.

Her eyes furrowed. "You are not getting a cookie," she said sternly.

Jereme, almost out of hope, began concocting a new plan. This strategy needed to be perfect, so he put his game up and ran up to his room. He burst through the door and sat himself down at his desk, the tune of Mission Impossible began playing as if he were in a movie. He looked around and realized the tune was coming from inside his own head. Pulling out paper and a pencil, he began planning the cookie mission.

The phone rang. Jereme jumped. He was so consumed in his planning that the sudden noise caught him off guard. Jereme looked at the clock. It read 4:15. "I need to get my cookie before 5:00 so I don’t 'spoil my dinner'" he thought. He quietly snuck downstairs to reconnoiter the battleground. His mother had answered the phone and was sitting in the living room on the couch. It appeared that she was talking to a friend as her voice was cheery and she seemed to be settled in for a lengthy visit, so Jereme took courage and began to execute his plan.

The living room was around the corner from the kitchen, so if he could just get past her, she wouldn't be able to see what he was doing. He didn't want to lie to his mother, so the plan was to sneak past without her asking any questions.

He crept down the stairs and quietly crouched below the back of the couch. Mom was talking and laughing with her friend, so Jereme got on his hands and knees and crawled across the floor. Suddenly, the conversation stopped. Jereme's heart began to pump. "How am I going to explain crawling behind the couch?" he thought in a panic. He thought he could feel the gaze of his mother's eyes upon his shoulders. He slowly turned to face the wrath of mom and the questions she would ask, but was pleasantly surprised that the conversation had merely shifted to the person on the other end. Mom didn't see him. She began laughing and talking again.

"This is it!" he thought, "With her laughing and talking, I can rush into the kitchen without her noticing much of a sound." He scurried into the kitchen. Stage one of the mission was a success! She didn't hear anything.

"I had better keep this quiet though," he thought. "I wouldn't want to blow it now."

He quietly crossed the linoleum floor to the counter where the snowman cookie jar was. He slowly lifted the lid and began to put his hand inside. All of the sudden, things got quiet. The chills of the fear of being caught swept over him. He glanced around, but didn't see a mom in sight. He listened hard and heard footsteps coming his way. His heart began to beat hard and he knew if he got caught, he would be in some serious trouble. His hand was already half in the jar. At a fleeting attempt to win his cookie, he quickly snatched a cookie and yanked his hand out of the jar.

As he yanked his hand, it caught the lip of the jar. The jar jumped from its place like it was trying to commit suicide by jumping off the edge of the counter. It began to fall towards the floor. As Jereme watched the jar fall, he could see his life flash before his eyes. He noticed the speed at which the cookie jar was falling was unusually slow. Quickly thinking, he shoved the cookie he had in his hand into his pocket and dove to save mister snowman cookie jar from his awful demise.

Sitting in his room grounded; after the yelling he got from his father; and the cost of the jar deducted from his allowance, he thought to himself, "If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't have wasted the time asking for the cookie." He did get his cookie and as he ate it, he felt it was worth it!