Please note: this story is a stand alone piece and has nothing to do with the young adult novel, Super Me, or A Super Series whatsoever. Just a fun little piece written from a writing prompt. The prompt was: Glass Half Full or Glass Half Empty. Here’s what I came up with:

-Choose Correctly-

“I’m sorry,” I said, tears threatening. “I’m telling you. I don’t understand the question.”

“You don’t understand the question? How can you not understand the question?” The creature in front of me was large and round with slime-like drool dribbling down its green chin as it leaned in to squint down at me with frog-like eyes.

“Because they look the same to me!” I blurted. “They look exactly the same!” I was sick of these games. Sick of being stuck there while they tortured me with these ridiculous questions. I squirmed in the uncomfortable chair and grasped edge of the table in front of me even tighter.

“Impossible,” the smaller of the two croaked from his perch across the room. “She’s being difficult. Ask her again.”

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. It was too bright in there. And stuffy like a sauna. How did they stand it?

“Which glass is it?” Frog Man asked me again. I sighed and watched as he, again, tapped first one glass of water on the table and then the other, painfully slowly, with his bulbous yellow-spotted pointer finger. “This one?” he asked. “Or this one?”

“What does it matter?” I groaned.

Frog Man ignored my question and grunted, his belly pushing against the table. The whole thing shifted and the contents of the glasses sloshed close to the lipped edge, but didn’t spill over. “One is half full….” he said, “and one is half empty.” He crossed his arms. “Answer correctly and then you may have a drink.”

I licked my chapped lips with my sandpaper tongue. Half full or half empty? I looked from one glass to the other. Which was which? I leaned forward to look at the waterline from eye-level, as if that would help me out. These guys were nuts. Why couldn’t they just let me go? I needed to get out of there.

I ventured a peek at the locked door, where the other one slouched on his tall stool, beady eyes never leaving me for a second. If I tried to run, they’d have me in an instant. I closed my eyes and shook my head. No, the only way out of this madness was to play their game. I had to guess.

But which was which? Both glasses were the same! The SAME!

I put my forehead down on the surprisingly cool table.

“She don’t know,” sang a voice I didn’t recognize. Someone I couldn’t see. “We’s wasting time, we is. She don’t know!”

“Ugh,” I said, pulling my head up. I lifted my finger to point at first one glass and then the other. Eenie, meanie, mine-ie… “That one is half full,” I said, my aim landing on one of the glasses. Fifty-fifty is pretty good odds right? “And, so that makes that one,” I continued, “half empty.”

I gave the creatures in the room a winning smile, raising my eyebrows.

“Congratulations,” drawled the large looming creature. “You get to live.”