Author’s Note: Another Write Brain Workbook exercise that came from my 2016 experiment. The prompt was to finish the story after “…told her the secret of what’s happening in our…”

I refuse to accept money for shoveling Mrs. Walker’s driveway and sidewalk, but I would never turn down a cup of her hot chocolate. Today, after she shared the secret to her recipe, I broke down and told her the secret of what’s been happening in our neighborhood. You see, I’d recently been given top secret information about an alien invasion, but I’m not talking about the kind with robots or little green men. I’m talking about alien snowflakes. I thought of Mrs. Walker like a grandmother and didn’t want her to die of shock in the spring when the snow thawed and revealed three foot tall ice aliens, so I quietly explained it to her. I told her that the only way to fight them was with excessive noise and buckets of hot water, and she never said a word as I promised to protect her. I wasn’t even sure she believed me until I overheard my parents talking about hearing Mrs. Walker screaming at the snow banks and Dad said he thought it might be time for her to be in a nursing home. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. After all, what could ice aliens possibly want with an old woman anyway?