Dorothy Comes Home - Contest Entry

Now for the prompts - remember, you must use at least one prompt from each group in your story line, plus an extra one from any group for a total of 4 prompts used.

GROUP 1, The Who's of the story
C) Good Witch Glenda goes renegade

GROUP 2, The What's of the story
L) A news crew has caught your character(s) in compromising circumstances - #2

GROUP 3, The Wildcards (heh, heh, heh)
P) A set of Enyclopedias from the future arrives through the mail - #1
T) A second-hand computer seems to finish your homework/projects/writings by itself - #3


Imaginative Contest #2


Dorothy woke with a hangover. She tried to suppress her throbbing headache and hoped that by ignoring it, it might go away. A result of her accident, the pounding in her temples alternated with periods of relief that only made the explosions in her skull all that much more painful.

She pulled her clothes on. Despite her pain, she anticipated the coming day. The spotlight would be on her. Nothing noteworthy generally happened in her small Kansas town. She knew the gossip about her misfortune had been circulating since she had the mishap, and expected to receive the exclusive attention of her classmates. Her mishap promised to provide her classmates with something to talk about for weeks. She recognized it as good gossip so she did not mind.

She slurped down a bowl of Cream of Wheat and declined the toast her aunt suggested for breakfast. Her plain plaid sweater fit snugly as she pulled it over her head. Satchel in hand, she headed out the door.

Her dog met her outside, clamoring around her ankles.

“You can‘t go with me this time, Toto,” said Dorothy.

The canine protested, but Dorothy knew he understood. Nevertheless, the mutt persevered in his attempts to change her mind. She found Toto positively annoying when he behaved this way.

She saddled up her old, rusted-out bicycle and put her foot to the pedal. It too defied her. The wheels ground to a halt as the bike complained with a loud screech.

“Darn it,” said Dorothy out loud. “This is not good.”

The oil can she sought lay on a rickety, splintered wood shelf in the shed adjacent to the barn. She greased the derailleur, overcoming the two-wheeler’s refusal to obey, and headed off for school unimpeded.

Class proved to be a disappointment. Bobbie Lou Jensen won the state spelling bee the previous week while Dorothy convalesced from her fall. On the day of Dorothy’s triumphant return, the attention of her fellow students fell on the spelling queen instead.

Dejected, Dorothy returned home. Although there was no place like home, she began to feel dissatisfied once again.

“Dorothy,” said her aunt meeting her at the door. “Did you order a set of encyclopedias? How do you expect to pay for them? Whatever were you thinking?”

“It has to be a mistake, Auntie Em,” said Dorothy. “I certainly did not, and I wouldn’t have a clue as to how to pay for them if I did.”

Her aunt seemed appeased. Dorothy knew Auntie Em would come to believe her once she had thought it over. The order had to be a mistake. Dorothy was incapable of finagling a set of expensive encyclopedias out of some unsuspecting book publisher and her aunt would realize that.

Dorothy ran to her room. She leafed through the reference books. Post-it tabs clearly marked two pages as significant. A look at a page in the F-G volume shocked the young teenager. The tin woodsman embraced Glenda with his arms around her midsection and brushed the right side of her face with a kiss. Glenda eyed the cameras taking the photo with a look of shock.

The headline said: Glenda Not So Good After All.

The text underneath explained:

The wife of the wizard of Oz caught trying to free herself from romantic clutches of the tin man. The Metal Man comes to a standstill once again. The Emerald City Daily News.

Dorothy tried to make sense of it all. The wizard had not married Glenda. And Glenda with her dear stainless steel friend? Preposterous.

The second location in the encyclopedias produced an even more mysterious article. In the book for topics beginning with the capital C, the item of interest related to a computer recall. The information thus imparted stated that Humbug Computers, “OZ1290C” had been recalled due to instability resulting in unreliable output.

Dorothy had never heard of either this particular company or brand. However, things became even more curious. This model did not come out for another year.

Confused, Dorothy checked the publication date of the encyclopedia. She received the encyclopedias ten years in advance of their copyright date.

No dummy, Dorothy knew that magic lay behind the mystery. However, the reason behind it eluded her for the time being.

#

Bo Carlson riveted Dorothy with his foxy six-foot two frame, sharply defined sinews and a face that she would pay to run her tongue over. His blonde hair, always tousled, caused streams of glandular heat to course through her veins. He brought out the normally reserved Kansas State University sophomore’s wild side.

Her inability to let Bo know her true feelings frustrated her. Although somewhat pretty, Dorothy bordered more closely towards the ordinary. Her relationship with Bo consisted of pure friendship. She wanted many times to let him know of her non-platonic interest but could not work up the nerve.

Bo had many love interests and friends. Dorothy knew he could take her or leave her. However, she hoped her closeness as a study partner might have created a latent romantic potential in Bo that would give her the edge over the competition. She wished to light the spark to trigger this starry-eyed flame.

With great fear, she chose an old-fashioned, but trusted and true method many with crushes on members of the opposite sex used. She would send him an anonymous email.

She used the second-hand “OZ1290” she had bought two years after receiving the encyclopedias. She purchased it despite the possibility of a malfunction as an adolescent response to the warning in the encyclopedias. Her curiosity had not allowed her to ignore the implications of the alert.

Although the computer had promised to misbehave, it proved to be the most reliable machine she ever owned.

Taking great care so he could not trace her address, she opened a heretofore previously non-existent email account with Yahoo. She carefully thought out the words she wished to convey to the sexy stud. She typed out:

Dear Bo,

You know me but have no clue I am in love with you. You are the handsomest man I have ever met, but I value you for much more than that. You are intelligent, outgoing, and very popular. People love you wherever you go. I tell you this in the slight hopes you may feel the same way about me to some small degree. I just had to let you know.

A friend.

Satisfied, Dorothy saved the message in her Word files and sent it to her hopeful love interest.

#

Bo showed no suspicion the email came from her. Three days passed and he treated her the same way as he always did. Feeling her emotions threaten to spill over, she confronted him in the library while assisting him with his algebra homework.

“Bo?” asked Dorothy. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, Dorth,” said Bo. He seemed bored.

“Have you gotten anything strange in your Inbox?”

Bo jerked back. His eyes looked away and he turned flush red. He spun back around to her and slapped his fists on the table.

Dorothy recoiled. A mouthful of acid rose in her throat. She did not expect this response.

“Yes, I got quite an email,” he replied. “Maybe you know something about it?”

“Bo?” asked Dorothy. Confusion magnified fear.

Bo pulled out a hardcopy of a note from inside his backpack. He showed it to Dorothy.

Dear Bo,

You know me but have no idea how I really feel about you. You are so vain about your looks you make me want to throw up. In addition, you are dense, shallow, and promiscuous. Other girls say you know about as much about lovemaking as a construction worker knows about astrophysics. I really don’t care what you think of me, but someone really needed to tell you what the world thinks of you.

Signed,

A former friend.

“Former friend,” said Bo. “You’ve got that right.”

His books made a loud crash on the table as he threw them down and stomped out of the study room.

Being struck by a thunderbolt could not have leveled Dorothy more. She inched her way out of the room, jogged down the library stairs, and sprinted her way back to her dorm bawling.

She had to know how such a thing could have happened. Did she write the email on drugs? She checked her files and drew up the copy of the document she earlier composed for her friend. An exact duplicate of the letter Bo showed her emerged on her screen.

Flustered, she could not accept this. She wondered if she experienced an altered state of reality.

She stood and stared at the monitor. An error message emerged with the words posted on it:

“I tried to warn you.

Signed, The Wizard of Oz.”

The screen went blank. A screen saver she did not recognize appeared:

“Dear Dorothy” said the PowerPoint presentation.

“Next time leave the oil can here. Best regards, Glenda.”