Short Story: "Charlie & His Chocolate Catastrophe"

Our writing prompt this week for the Creative Writing Club I belong to was writing a story using lots of c’s.  So, without further ado, here is the story of Charlie and his chocolate catastrophe!

Charlie & His Chocolate Catastrophe

A Short Story by Luke A. Bunker

Heaven. On. Earth.  –  A Russell Stover Factory Outlet in Montrose, Colorado.

A collection of crumbly chocolate cascaded off its cream-colored shelves and crashed cacophonously onto the clumsy Charlie Cunningham in the chocolate factory outside Cocoa Falls, California.  Charlie’s cousin Cherry came by to help him and cared for him until he recovered, offering him cocoa and cookies.  But what do you think Charlie did?  Charlie started to choke on the crunchy chunky chocolate-chip cookies!  So Cherry took him to the crumby clinic across town to be checked out.  Turns out Charlie was now allergic to chocolate – how catastrophic!

Melancholy, Cherry took Charlie to a counselor named Cassandra, who tried to coax him into consuming chocolate alternatives.  Charlie cried and cried…  No more Cadbury?  No more milk chocolate?  No more dark chocolate?  No more cocoa-roasted cashews?  No more chocolate chip cookies or cocoa from his Keurig?  Charlie was so, so sad and could be found crying in a corner in his Craftsman-style compound on Country Club Circle.

He quickly found he couldn’t even look at his town’s name anymore, so he contacted his mother – Connie in Connecticut – and asked if he could move there this coming quarter.  She said, “Of course!  Come up to Cascade and cook for your Mother [for Charlie loved to cook] and help her run the store!”

So, Charlie called the Cocoa Falls Commutation Travel Company, booked a plane ticket on Continental Airlines with a cross-country stop in Columbus, said goodbye to Cherry, and checked in his Coach luggage and used his credit card miles to board first class.

When Charlie came into view in Cascade, his cherished mother Connie came up in her coffee-colored Cadillac, helped him with his luggage, and handed him a cappuccino.  What was in this cappuccino?  You guessed it – chocolate!!

Creative Writing Club + Getting More Involved

Last week, I attended my first Creative Writing Club meeting, and it was great!  After going to the Open Mic night a couple weeks ago (which I really enjoyed and gave me great hope and belief in people and keeping arts alive at DCCC and in Dodge City), they said they had a creative writing club that meets on Fridays at 1, so I decided to do it!

Jane, the creative writing instructor @ DC3 and the quasi-meeting-leader, is quite awesome and seems like a very nice, caring and creative person who really listens to people and is an excellent critique-r.  You don’t get all of that in one person very often.  And the students (around 5-6 total, including another adult) who came to the meeting are all very unique and interesting – we have a juggler who is very positive and happy-go-lucky but really came out with a very thought-provoking poem, a deeply gifted – and perhaps troubled? – writer who I stupidly pre-judged because everything seemed a little too over-the-top until I got to know her better, a fellow NaNoWriMo competitor!!, and others…

I guess the whole point of this post is to say that I am really glad I’m getting more involved with school/life activities and getting to know people with similar interests.  It’s also encouraging to see all of these adults/professors in their out-of-school environments (like in Quiz Bowl, which I am a happy member of after skipping out – why?!? – in high school) and to see that they are awesome, dedicated, full people.  I really look forward to getting to know these people better while at the same time cultivating my likes, hobbies and passions!

Back to the writing club, this week’s prompt is “contrasting the light and the dark.”  I want light and dark to be a couple that is falling apart but come back to each other after all and stay in love.  It’s not as easy as I thought it would be, and I’m not uber-into poetry like some of the other people in the club, but I am committed to making it work!