Baking Disaster

Baking Disaster

Darleen was bent over looking inside the oven when she heard a loud crash. She ran to the probable source of the sound to find her six year old son under a pile of books.

“Kevin, what were you doing?” she asked as she helped him up.

“Trying to catch Sparkles”.  Kevin pointed at his pet hamster now peering down at the two of them from the top of the bookshelf. 

“The cookies are burning”, Darleen whispered jumping up to run to the kitchen. Startled and closing her eyes to the deafening noise of the smoke detector made her nearly run over her four year daughter, Nicky, who was standing soaking wet naked in the middle of the doorway.

Darleen ignored the ringing telephone as she put on the oven mitts and grabbed the cookies from the oven.  Just as the smoke alarm stopped, after she disengaged it, she heard her neighbor, Mrs. Kinsley, leaving her a message on the answering machine, ‘Darleen, did you know your smoke alarm is on?’

Before she had time to check on the damage the hamster was doing to her new living room furniture and help her daughter get dressed and save her customized oak floor from a terrible water mark the doorbell rang.

She heard her husband, Kenny, yelling, “Darleen, it’s me. I forgot my keys again”.

Kenny surveyed the scene.  Now Sparkles was chewing on the bottom of the living room curtains as Kevin inched closer to catch him using Kenny’s Cuban cigar box as a trap. Twenty Cuban cigars lay crumpled on the floor.

“Darleen, were you making cookies?” Kenny asked his wife.

“Yes”, she answered, her head down.

“Why, you know baking is always a disaster for you?”

“They made me do it”, Kelly answered, looking at her two children.

300 words