If this is Wednesday, then it must be time to share another story short.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m reading my way through a folder full of story shorts, written during the Friday Writing sprints–looking for laughs and also possible ideas for new projects.  Some of the sprint results were definite misses, but a few still manage to make me chuckle.

Today’s offering features an enterprising nanny and some troublesome employers.

So, without further ado, here is my short story based on the prompts from a Friday Writing Sprint, which included the prompt “Having poisoned the soup, a disgruntled nanny thwarts an assassination attempt“, and words from the following list:  corruption, severe, healer, aftermath, subsonic, photograph, memory, chamber, brainwash, furious, festival, autopsy, innocent, battle, zebra, panic.

I hope you enjoy it.

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The Perfect Nanny Handbook

Rule #14: Always leave a room in better condition than you found it. A messy room is the sign incompetence.

Frances tossed the handbook down on the table, successfully battling the urge to send it flying out the window, or better yet, directly into the shredder.

Obviously, the handbook author had never met the Smith Family, if that was in fact their real name. In the two months Frances had been acting as the combination housekeeper, cook, nanny, and Jane-of-all-trades, she had far bigger concerns than tidiness.

Currently, disposing of the body at the dinning room table, face planted in the midst of a bowl of her famous Italian Wedding Soup with its “secret special ingredient” was her primary concern. It was the third body this week and she was getting tired of thinking of creative ways to ensure an autopsy finding of “natural causes.”

If people didn’t stop trying to kill her employers, she was going to hand in her resignation and head for the nearest tropical island for a well deserved break.

But first, she had to put an end to the assassination attempts. The Smiths were annoying, seeped in corruption, and no doubt engaged in various illegal acts in that locked basement chamber of theirs, but that didn’t give the ongoing parade of bumbling criminals the right to burst into the house, guns drawn, brandishing incriminating photographs, making dire threats, and basically causing a mess she inevitably had to clean up.

It was annoying and it upset the dog, not to mention the mess it made of the daily schedule.

The Smiths, of course, were no help at all. At the first sign of trouble, they would inevitably panic, loudly claim their innocence, and lock themselves in the cellar, leaving Frances to tidy up the mess.

As she staged the scene, making it look like the Smiths had been victims of (yet another) home invasion during which Mr. Fuller (if that was his real name), had blundered into the kitchen and been felled by a steaming kettle of soup, causing him to, tragically (and fatally) hit is head on a conveniently opened drawer, Frances wished she’d never answered the ad for an Undercover Nanny.

With her fondness for “adult entertainment” she’d had a completely different expectation of the job. Sadly, instead of playtime under the covers, her job had consisted of countless hours putting criminals permanently underground.

And they didn’t even trust her with a gun or the reason for the parade of assassins.

Well, this was the last time. The next time someone came for the Smiths she was going to let them go ahead with their work unhindered. If she was quick enough, she could be the one locked in the cellar.

Sure, with her employers dead she’d be out of a job, but the Smith’s wine cellar would ease the pain.

Besides, who knows what else she might find down there. As long as it wasn’t another body. She was done cleaning up other people’s messes.

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If you enjoyed that short and are hankering to see what others did with these same random words, head on over to the original post and check out the entries in the comments section.

Enjoy and Happy Writing!