(I wrote this in response to a creative writing challenge from TV’s Michael J. Nelson.
“I overspent on tape,” he said, his eyes filled with regret. “How will we ever use it all?”
She looked over at the three hundred plastic scotch tape dispensers, one stacked on the other, filling nearly a quarter the wall of their apartment. She walked over to the pile and picked one up. “Tape is useful,” she said.
“But, this much tape?” He replied. “No one can use this much tape!”
She nodded, holding the plastic dispenser in her right hand. With her left she pulled off a strip of tape about three inches long. Attaching the bottom of the tape to her eyebrow, she pulled the other end up and stuck it to her forehead. She did the same with another strip on her other eyebrow. When she was done, she looked very surprised. She smiled.
He giggled.
With another strip of tape, she pulled up the tip of her nose, sticking the other end to the bridge. She followed suit by pulling the edges of her mouth up in a faux-smile. By the time her exercise was done, she looked like a very surprised, but happy, pig.
He giggled once more, before walking over and grabbing one of the dispensers. With a smile, he began taping his face as well, molding it and distorting it into a variety of hilarious shapes and forms. They went through six dispensers that hour, making funny faces and expressions. When the novelty of that wore off, they took to acting out Shakespearean plays with whatever expressions they could muster. She praised his pig-nosed, sad Hamlet. He believed her slightly confused Lady Macbeth.
By the time the sun set, they had used all of the tape, leaving a room full of empty, plastic dispensers. They sat in the middle of the pile, exhausted but still laughing at a day of tape-filled hilarity.
“That was fun,” he said.
She nodded in agreement, then paused. “Though, I do have to wonder,” she said. “Why did we need tape for in the first place? I know there was something we needed to fix.”
He thought for a moment, before responding. “That jerk, Jacob. I ripped his page out of the phone book.”
“You were jealous.”
“Yes.”
She paused. “That seemed like a rash response.”
“So was buying three hundred rolls of scotch tape,” he said. “But, we made that work.”
“I guess we did,” she replied.