The Outlandish Adventures of Buttface and Egghead

The Sandbox of Doom

ONE // THE SANDBOX OF DOOM 

The following week, the little girl didn't dare go near the swirly red slide as she watched her classmates flock the playground in colorful and mismatched swarms.

Instead, she hiked the hem of her flowy dress above her knees, which had faded into a blushing pink and served as her battle scars from conquering the swirly red slide, and she marched past the group of kids gathered around the slides, earning her a few subtle snickers. She pursed her lips, dampening them along with the very edges of her cheek as she stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth just a bit too far, attempting to mimick the suave and smart older girls she had seen on the television screen as her older sister had mindlessly flicked through the channels. 

She huffed, heaving her shoulders upwards in annoyance as she took note of the three swings occupied by three rambunctious boys from her class. She timidly made her way towards the tree house where clattering shouts and yells could be heard as some of the children acted out their very own war attack. She wandered around the tree house before coming across a large golden square, framed by the light brown of rotting and decayed wood. She blinked at the bright golden which contrasted greatly with the greenish brown grass, and stepped forward before bending her knees, and reaching down to poke it. 

"What are you doing?" a boyish voice queried.

She looked up, her eyes wide in alarm as if she had just been caught stealing the last cookie, and sat frozen in place. The boy's furrowed eyebrows and crinkled forehead smoothed out almost immediately and a wide, toothy smile took over his features as she blinked up at him, silently making fun of his oddly-shaped head as he grinned at her before suddenly, realization clicked into place.

"Hey, buttface!" he exclaimed. "How's it goin'?!"

She frowned, "I told you not to call me that!"

His expression fell slightly, "But I let you call my egghead!"

"Because you are an egghead, you egghead!"

He gaped at her as if he could not believe what he was hearing, "See?!"

"What?"

"You're mean," he huffed.

"Me?" she feverishly challeneged. "How am I mean? You called my buttface!"

"Because you are a buttface, you buttface!"

"Did you just copy me?"

"No," he groaned. "You buttface."

"Stop calling me that!" she snapped, the apples of her cheeks blossoming into bright red as the heat of the bright sun beat down upon her skin, and the annoyance flushed through her veins. "I am not a buttface!"

"Fine, you're not a buttface."

She smiled, looking pleased with herself as she properly sat down then, allowing her stout little legs crossing over each other as she took hold of an abandoned plastic shovel and stuffed it into the glimmering golden sand. 

After a moment of toeing the grass beneath his laced sneakers, he sat on the opposite side of the sandbox from her and used a stick to carve into the sand. The chatter and giggles of their classmates was all that could be heard for a short moment before he spoke, "But you did have faces on your butt, though, so that makes you a buttface."

"They were smiley faces!" she retaliated, growing increasingly annoyed with him. She gripped the handle of the shovel in her hands, chanting to herself to not throw a shovel full of sand over at his weirdly-shaped head. 

He shrugged, amused by how annoyed she got, "They were still faces."

She sighed before carefully speaking, "Wanna help me make a sandcastle?"

He mulled over the thought, his eyebrows furrowed and the cupid's bow just above his lips glimmered a blushing red as he scraped his bottom teeth against the skin roughly.

"Okay," he nodded.

She brightened up before handing him a second plastic shovel that she had hidden beneath the fabric of her dress.

The two of them began to violently claw and scrape at the layer of sand, tossing handfuls and bucket fulls into a pile between the both of them. Once they hole they had dug up together was deep enough, she fished her pink princess thermos of water and poured it down into the deep dark hole, smiling proudly as the water lapped up and down against the sides of the hole.

"What is that?" he asked in wonder, his eyes wide as the water began to seep into the sand.

"The hole of doom," she replied deeply, giggling to herself as he stared at her. "That's where you're gonna end up if you're mean to me again."

His mouth opened and closed as he gaped at her. 

"But I'm not mean!" he protested. He stood up, his fingers nervously intertwined with each other as he frowned at her. "You're mean."

With that, he ran away, and she laughed.