The Snot Rocket Queen, The Beginning

Before I knew about 3WW, I found Writing Fix, a place that is full of ideas for writing prompts. While I was there I was fooling around with the various novel ideas they've got, and I generated a challenge to write a story about someone with Super Powers, and the Super Power my person had was Glow-In-The-Dark Boogers. I fooled around with that idea for a while and got the beginning of a story about Ribmz Kisky. This is the first installment.

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From the time Ribmz Kisky was a child, she knew there was something different about her. First off, she had that terrible name. Her mother had been a mail order bride from a tiny village in what used to be called Yugoslavia. Mother Kisky never did quite catch onto the English language, so when it came time to name her brand new, beautiful baby girl, she gave her the best name she could think of. A name which, in her native dialect, meant Glorious Sunshine. Unfortunately what may have been lyrical in Yugoslavian was merely Ribmz in English.

Then there was that awful illness Ribmz caught when she was 3. Gambian Rats were considered the ideal pets where Mother Kisky came from, so of course she'd brought one with her when she came to America. Unfortunately Mother Kisky couldn't allow her pet, which she'd named Oizy, out of the house because Oizy freaked out all the neighbors who thought Oizy was a mutated version of something they'd call an exterminator to kill. So, Oizy was kept housebound.

When Ribmz was born, Oizy became devoted to the baby girl. This was fine until Oizy got out one night, met up with a local rat in heat and caught a raging case of Monkey Pox. Before anyone realized Oizy was even sick, the Monkey Pox was passed onto to Ribmz, and that was the beginning of all the trouble.

Oizy did not survive the Monkey Pox, but fortunately, Ribmz did. However, there was always something different about Ribmz after that bout with the illness. She developed terrible allergies which meant her nose was constantly running, her eyes watered, and she had to take plenty of antihistamines just so she could breathe. The antihistamines helped her allergy condition tremendously; however, the medication caused her to produce enormous boogers. Nothing seemed wrong with Ribmz during the day, but at night in the pitch dark, the bridge of Ribmz's nose would start to glow with an eerie green light as her boogers grew to the size of king sized marbles. Mother Kisky believed this was a magical power bestowed upon her daughter by the spirit of the departed Oizy. Ribmz thought it was a royal pain in the ass.

And then one night Mother Kisky and Ribmz were walking home from Ribmz's weekly Girl Scout meeting. Since the Kiskys didn't own a car, Mother Kisky walked everywhere with Ribmz to drop her off and pick her up rather than take a chance on Ribmz being alone on the street after dark. On this particular night, Ribmz was having a very hard time breathing. It only took Mother Kisky a glance at Ribmz to notice that the bridge of her nose was starting to glow.

Just as they were almost home, a stranger suddenly jumped out of the shadows and began struggling with Mother Kisky in an effort to grab her handbag. Ribmz was terrified watching her mother struggle with the bigger, obviously stronger thief. As she stood there, frozen to the spot, she suddenly felt an uncontrollable urge to sneeze. Now, Ribmz had always been taught to cover her mouth and nose when she sneezed because it was simply rude to do otherwise. But on this night, watching her mother try to fight off the attempts of the robber, Ribmz was not thinking about courtesy. She just threw back her head and sneezed as loudly as she could.

It was absolutely amazing. Two gigantic green, glow-in-the-dark, marble sized boogers flew right out of her nose and hit the would-be robber right in the head and knocked him out cold. At that moment, The Snot Rocket Queen was born.

To Be Continued....