My first one-shot! Let's see how this goes.
This story is based off of something that happened to me and my brother one day in real life, just with Monica and Ross filling in as the two of us.
There is some gruesome material in here; I just didn't think it was enough for an M rating. If you're easily disturbed at the mention of blood, then I wouldn't suggest reading on. It's nothing detailed or anything like that. The blood was just kind of important to the story.
1985
A fourteen-year-old Monica Geller was doing her favorite activity to do in those rare times when people actually decided to leave her alone: think about names.
No, she wasn't getting a new pet puppy or kitten.
No, she didn't have a teenage pregnancy or anything along those lines.
In fact, she couldn't be further from having children of her own, but that didn't stop her from dreaming. She figured that the longer the amount of time she spent thinking about the future, the more likely it was to be a success. And the same went for her future children's names. If she spent plenty of time thinking over names, then she would have a much better chance of—when it was time to have a baby—knowing what to name her child.
Which was why she now sat in her bedroom on a Friday night, on her bed, cross-legged, with a two-inch binder resting on her lap. She happily dug her fork into the rich chocolate cake on her nightstand as she tried to think of names. Whenever she thought of one, she would write it in the binder—in the appropriate category, of course. She had three main categories, each with several subcategories. Under the main categories of Boy Names and Girl Names were the subcategories of Common, Uncommon, and Middle Names—each category having twenty-six sheets of paper in it, one for each possible starting letter of the names. The final main category was titled Sibling Names.
The last category was for pairs and groupings of names that Monica thought sounded good together. This category was organized a little bit differently. The four subcategories were Boy-Girl, Boy-Boy, Girl-Girl, and Three or More. She was tempted to further divide the subcategories by indicating whether each pair or grouping was chosen because the names rhymed, began with the same letter, or sounded similar. She quickly decided against this.
She knew she was clearly overly organizing this binder to the point of it being impractical, but she didn't care. Even if she was writing boy names in blue and girl names in red.
She really didn't care. The reason she was organizing the names so much was simply for the fun of organizing. She loved the fact that, once she thought of a name, she couldn't just scribble it down and be done. She had to really think about—really consider—the name. And that was where all the fun came in.
Other kids her age could have their own version of Friday night fun, hanging out with their friends or going to parties or doing whatever it was that fourteen-year-old were doing these days. Monica, however, was fine on her own.
Her dad always told her of how independent he thought she was. At least he loved her. Sometimes, she couldn't help but think that her mother didn't—that she preferred her brother, Ross.
Ross was so smart, so perfect in their mother's eyes. He could do no wrong.
Monica, on the other hand . . .
Monica was nothing. She never won awards. She was never on the honor roll. She was talentless, worthless. At least, that was how her mother made her feel.
Even her father could put her down at times. She could easily remember a specific incident that had shown her at a very young age that both her parents preferred Ross over her.
1978
"Monica!" Jack Geller called to his seven-year-old daughter. "Come help with dinner!"
Hearing the call for help—as it was her turn to set the table tonight—Monica ran off toward the kitchen. She loved helping with dinner. Her brother, Ross, always complained when it was his turn, but Monica was perfectly fine with providing an extra set of hands.
She had about halved the distance between her and the kitchen when it happened.
Suddenly, Ross appeared from around the corner, running as well. Running right at her. It was too late. There was no time to turn or stop. Ross opened his mouth to yell, but was cut off when they suddenly smacked into each other. He was significantly taller than his sister as he had recently hit a growth spurt, causing his two front teeth to collide with the very center of her forehead. In all the chaos, everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.
It took a full long second for the pain to register. During that second, she had endured Ross's screaming from a whole dish a pain of his own. Monica felt her skull being scraped at as the two teeth broke out of her brother's mouth and found a home in her forehead. Along with them came a fountain of blood, which she hoped was Ross's. She may have only been seven, but she was old enough to know that a mouth injury was way less serious than a head injury.
Monica threw her hands up to her hand where the teeth where lodged into her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ross drop down to the floor in pain, a hand uselessly attempting to catch the blood as it freely flowed from his mouth. Most of it poured from between his fingers and stained the carpet red.
"Monica!" Jack called again with more than a hint of frustration, but this time his voice was muffled. When there was no reply, he went off in search of what was taking his daughter so long. When he turned a corner to find both his son and daughter there, he had the wonderful opportunity of viewing a scene that would forever be engraved into his memory. "Oh, my God!" he shouted, running toward Ross as he didn't even notice that Monica was in pain as well. He wasn't sure what to do, so he turned his head toward a crying Monica. "What happened?" His voice had the slightest tinge of anger in it, but it was mostly carrying a tone of concern.
Monica simply pointed a shaky finger up to her forehead in response, which was when Jack actually paid attention enough to notice the teeth lodged in her head and the blood smears. His attention was suddenly turned back to Ross. "Are you okay, Ross?" The boy shook his head. "Are you still bleeding?"
Ross nodded. He pulled a hand away from his mouth to show his father that it was full of blood. Jack ran out of the room, and in the distance the siblings could hear him calling for their mother.
Soon, both parents were back in the room with a box of tissues. They helped Ross to the bathroom and catered to his wound, leaving Monica behind and ignored.
I . . . I have a hole . . . in my head, she thought as she sat alone in the room. They could at least get my brother's teeth out of me. That's a thought I never imagined I would have.
1985
Just the memory of the incident caused Monica's head to ache. She rested her forehead in her palms, placing her elbows on her knees as she now sat with her legs tucked up against her torso.
Despite the incident occurring seven years ago, not much had changed since then. She was sure that if the same thing happened today, her parents would still tend to Ross's bleeding mouth before they even asked if the hole in Monica's head was a little uncomfortable.
She couldn't even remember the teeth ever coming out of her head. They must have fallen out on their own, because Monica could not imagine with the pain she had been in that she would have allowed someone to touch even anywhere near her head to retrieve the pearly whites.
What she did remember, however, was after her parents had finished caring for her brother, an interesting conversation had ensued. Their parents had wanted to know what had caused this whole situation to occur in the first place.
1978
"What happened?" Judy asked, fixating a glare on Monica.
"What are you looking at me for?" Monica cried. "I didn't doing anything! He just ran into me. For no reason."
"Did not!" Ross defended himself. "You ran into me."
"Liar!" Monica practically screamed.
"Hey, don't yell at your brother," Judy scolded. "Now explain what actually happened."
Monica took a deep breath and continued. "Dad called me into the kitchen to help with—"
"No!" Ross interrupted. "He called me."
"No, he called me," Monica corrected. "Why would he call you? It's my turn to help with dinner tonight."
"And may I say, you are doing a wonderful job of it," Judy sarcastically remarked.
Monica resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Dad, weren't you calling me?"
Jack nodded. "Yes, I was, in fact."
"Ha!" Monica taunted her brother. "I knew I was right. And that means you ran into me."
"I thought he was calling me," Ross replied.
"Well, he wasn't, doofus!" Monica shouted.
"Would you two stop it?" Judy ordered. "The fact is, Monica, you really hurt your brother and made him lose his two front teeth, so apologize."
Monica gave her mother a look. "What? What did I do wrong?"
"Don't argue. Just do what I tell you to, young lady."
Monica gritted her teeth. "I'm . . . sorry."
"Could you do it without the sarcasm this time?" Ross requested.
Monica clenched both hands into fists and formed a fake sincere smile. "I'm sorry, Ross." The words coming out of her mouth were very different from the words in her head. The words in her head were the kind of words that, if she said them aloud, would wind up with her getting smacked.
1985
By age fourteen, she was now able to fully understand why Ross had thought his name was the one being called instead of Monica's. Even if logic would have told him otherwise.
Not only did both their names contain an "O" in them, but also in both names, the "O" made the same sound. The same sound as in the words "pot" and "lot" and "dot". The same sound as in the interjection "aw" or the noun "mom". Sure, the names Ross and Monica didn't sound similar at all, but it was that one sound that caused such a horrible incident to occur. That one mutual vowel.
She stared down at the binder resting upon her lap and the blue and red pens in her hand that she had been about to use to write the boy-girl sibling names of Andy and Sandy before her mind had begun to wander to the subject of the tragic flashback. She rested the two pens on her nightstand and turned back to her binder. Flipping through several pages, she realized that too many of the sibling names she had picked out during the time period she had owned this binder sounded very similar to one another or even rhymed. She grabbed hold of the entire Sibling Names category—each and every page at hand—and tore it out. She now held several pages of notebook paper in hand and stared down with furious eyes at her neat handwriting in the blue and red ink. With no reluctance, she smashed the pages down into the wastebasket by her bed.
She wouldn't be needing those anymore.
Instead, she would start over with her Sibling Names category. And, this time, she would make sure she found the most different sounding names possible. She would check to be sure they didn't rhyme or have any vowel sounds in common.
It wasn't long before she thought of Daniel and Emma.
I hope you guys enjoyed the story. It was my first one-shot, so I'm kind of new to the whole idea. I don't think I've ever even written a short story before.
Also, if you think Monica's binder organization was even a little extreme, you deserve to know that I was actually describing my binder that I own in real life. This also goes for anything else in the story that may have been thought of as unrealistic, because this pretty much all happened to me in real life, to some extent.
The following message doesn't really apply to this story, but I'll include it here anyway so that you guys don't have to wait for me to update my other stories for you to see it.
This is an opportunity for those who are fans of any of my three other stories—Transgendered Past, New School, or Happy Birthday! Again. If you PM me or write in your review of this story stating which story you would like to follow updates of, then I will PM you with what will most likely be daily updates of how I'm progressing with writing the next chapter of your selected story. Details such as the number of words I've written that day, hints at what's in store for the next chapter, and even sneak peaks at a paragraph or two of the next chapter will be included in these messages.
Once again, if you are interested, all you have to do is write a review for this story or send me a PM stating which story or stories you wish to follow the updates of.
I hope at least one person decides to follow my story updates. I will very much enjoy informing you guys of what's next to come. ;)