Honestly, I have never been less inspired by a prompt. It's not the fault of the QLFC mods, they can't get something every time. But this is why my plot is connected more loosely than I would have liked. The movie prompt is Halloween: Resurrection (because I'm the Beater 2 of Puddlemere), the additional prompts are (object) letter, (object) toy car, and (quote) It's the honest ones you want to watch out for. — Pirates of the Caribbean.
I made up the TV show. Or at least I think I did.
Word Count: 1,325
"I really hope this family is nicer than they seem," Kaliyah Fowler said to her colleague and co-host of How Do You Live, Ruby Reynolds as they were heading into the town, Little Whinging. It was somewhere in Surrey; Kaliyah honestly hadn't paid enough attention.
Ruby frowned. "They seem perfectly nice, based on the neighbour's account."
"They seem too nice," Kaliyah pointed out. "Those ones always turn out to be assholes."
"If you say so," Ruby responded flatly, obviously not believing a thing.
"I do. How on earth haven't you noticed, I wonder," Kaliyah answered.
Before their conversation got any further, they had reached their destination — Number Four Privet Drive — and had to leave the car, quickly followed by their three person filming crew who would be set up and ready to go in a matter of minutes.
The wife, Petunia Dursley, enthusiastically greeted them. She looked a bit too thin for Kaliyah's taste, like she wouldn't stop dieting no matter what, but otherwise like a typical housewife.
"Vernon, my husband, is at work," Mrs. Dursley explained unprompted, "He's sorry he couldn't be here, but his company having a meeting he can't miss today. He was so excited when your letter arrived." She went on to explain how her husband had such an important position and how proud she was of him.
"My son and nephew — both are three — are at the daycare," she added as they entered the house. "I heard it's important for children to have social connections outside the family, so they're at the daycare for a few hours on weekdays."
"When will you have to leave to pick them up?" Ruby questioned, clearly mentally adjusting their filming schedule as Kaliyah was herself.
"Oh, no, our neighbours at number eight also have a child in the daycare, and they've agreed to carpool today."
"That's nice of them," Kaliyah replied, but inwardly, she wondered why on earth this was an arrangement only for today. "The first part we film is usually the part of the house the family either spends the most time in or hopes to do so one day, to give the viewer a quick sense of the character of the family in question. What comes to mind that sums up your family?"
Mrs. Dursley smiled. "I know exactly what we should do. If you would follow me."
An hour of Mrs. Dursley rambling about her living room decor later, the children were coming home and they could finally persuade her to switch topic.
It was odd. Going by the numerous pictures of the wall, Kaliyah had assumed that the children must look like twins due to some genetic chance, because there seemed to be only one boy in all the pictures.
But seeing them now, she could stop wondering why no picture of both boys together had ever been taken, and instead feel a sense of dread rising when it became obvious that only the son of the family and not the nephew had been pictured.
Where the son was blond, tall, and corpulent, the nephew was small and lanky with dark skin and wavy black hair. There was clearly some Indian blood on the side of the parent not related to this family.
The son loudly wondered who they were, while the nephew quickly disappeared upstairs, but only after giving the cupboard under the stairs an oddly longing look.
Ruby and Kaliyah exchanged a look.
"How about we do the children's rooms next?" Kaliyah proposed and Mrs. Dursley agreed with more reclutance than she had shown today.
"If you don't mind I would like to use your loo while you go ahead," Ruby looked at the wife.
"Of course," she responded, and explained the location in almost too much detail.
Kaliyah went upstairs with the family, and the son turned out to be of the same sort as his mother, gladly shoving all of his belongings into her face. Kaliyah endured it with a smile for a minute or five, before she addressed Mrs. Dursley. "How about we get some footage from your nephew now? Given our episode length, we can't afford to spend more than three minutes per child."
Mrs. Dursley's smile was more of a grimace as she agreed to that plan. They headed across the hall and found the other boy staring at the toys in the room — all of which seemed broken at the first glance — like he couldn't quite believe they were there.
"Hello little one," Kaliyah greeted him, not letting the worry leak into her voice. "I'm Kaliyah. Can you tell me your name?"
The boy looked at Mrs. Dursley who probably gave some sort of sign that he could talk to her.
"I'm Harry," he muttered.
"Can you tell me something about your room, Harry?" Kaliyah tried to coax the child into talking. Given the way her show compared lifestyles, she had met quite a few children in her life and considered herself quite good with them, even if she had no desire to have any on her own, ever.
"This isn't my room," the boy answered to her shock. "It's the room for Dudley's broken toys."
"Do you sleep in the other room then?" Kaliyah questioned. "I thought it was just a guest room, since I saw no toys there."
Mrs. Dursley was clearly trying to stop this, but someone of the filming crew quietly trailed after her.
"It is a guest room," Harry responded quietly.
"Where are your things then?" Kaliyah asked, subtly checking with her crew to make sure they were filming all this and didn't have some weird error.
Harry brightened and ran towards the bed, pulling out a single toy car and a blanket. "This is my blanket. I've had it at least since I came here. It always comes back to me, no matter how often Dudley takes it, which is nice. And someone at daycare gave me the car and didn't want it back," Harry explained with a smile. He was clearly quite proud of his possessions.
"They are very nice things." Kaliyah nodded, causing the little boy to beam. The blanket seemed to have a name sewn into it, but she couldn't see it from here. "Do you have anything else?
"I have a bit of clothing," Harry responded. "I don't get nice things like Dudley." Behind her, Kaliyah could hear that her crew had dragged Mrs. Dursley away.
"Does Dudley often get things you don't?"
"All the time. When we have food, too. The only thing I have more of is chores, because he has none." The way he said it, the toddler clearly didn't see any problem with what he said.
Kaliyah was a bit taken aback and full of relief when Ruby returned to her side.
Until she spoke, that is.
"The cupboard under the stairs has a mattress in it. It's clearly lived in," she told Kaliyah, her voice full of horror.
"That's where I normally sleep," Harry added, clearly trying to be helpful. A few of the crew — Ruby included — looked at him in shock and he shrunk into himself and flinched, clearly expecting pain.
"Kaliyah, you were absolutely right," Ruby admitted after a few moments of silence.
"If it helps, I really wish I was wrong. And I wasn't expecting this," Kaliyah replied.
"That does help, yes."
Meanwhile a crew member had stepped forward — into the view of the camera which was normally a no-go — and knelt down in front of Harry.
"Is it okay if I hug you, Harry?" Eliza — that was her name — asked.
Harry looked at her, clearly confused. "Why?"
"Because I feel like you need one. And I think I need one, too."
"Alright," the small boy responded.
Kaliyah looked at Ruby and then at the rest of her crew. "We need to fix this. And we need to fix this fast."
The connection, in case anyone is wondering, is people entering a reality show and it not going as they planned. I feel like I should add this, but I also don't want to.