Marbles

This short story was part of a contest. I didn’t win…but I really enjoyed writing this story and wanted to share it with my Superfans! The contest provided the first line, the rest was up to me…
By BEBogdon @2025 all rights reserved

When she was eight, Alice Henderson briefly held the world record for filling her mouth with marbles. She emphasized this brevity by immediately departing from this world. Most people assumed that Alice had choked on one of the one hundred and fifteen marbles she had crammed into her mouth, but the coroner’s autopsy disagreed.

But that’s the end of the story, so let me begin at the beginning by telling you that Alice Henderson had a big mouth. And I mean that in the most literal sense; it’s almost an understatement. This otherwise shy, quiet, unremarkable child could unhinge her jaw and let it gape like the maws of hell. It was both unsettling and spectacular.

I was seven years old when I first noticed Alice’s superpower—for in my young, impressionable mind that’s what it was, a superpower. Our class was on the playground when a stray softball beaned Alice in the back of the head. Her blonde pigtails shook. She threw her head back, pinching her eyes shut. There was a moment of complete silence as her round face flushed piggy pink. Her mouth dropped open, and open, and open…and while the other boys ran away in fear, I stood frozen in awe. Alice gulped a lungful of air and released a high-pitched roar of distress, a beacon that alerted every playground monitor in the yard. The adults whisked her away, but it was too late; I had already seen! And I knew! I knew that Alice Henderson was extraordinary!

I immediately decided that Alice and I would become best friends. After days of bribing her with Little Debbie snacks, she allowed me to sit with her on the playground. But Alice didn’t really play; she just sat. Running made her breathe hard, and she didn’t like to get her little jean-jumper dress dirty. This was the opposite of the superheroes I’d seen at the movies, and I was beginning to second-guess my decision to form an alliance. But then…the Twinkie incident happened.

I discovered that Alice could devour that beautiful, golden cake in one bite. And she barely had to chew! Although Twinkies came in convenient packs of ten that were somewhat affordable to a young man with an allowance, my plans were much bigger. So I lied. I told my mother that she needed to buy snacks for the entire class. And one recess at a time, one box of Twinkies at a time, I began to fall in love with Alice Henderson’s big mouth.

Fueled by pride and profit, I would take bets from the other boys on how much Alice could eat in one sitting. That semester Alice and I netted around a dozen baseball cards, twenty jacks, ten polished rocks, two arrowheads, four toy airplanes, eleven green army men, five coins painted gold, exactly thirteen quarters (I remember because we argued over how to split the loot), and an ungodly number of Twinkies.

But our racketeering days seemed numbered; although Alice’s mouth was willing, her stomach proved to be weak, and our friendship was almost ruined when I lost a bet to Tommy Fuller over eight lousy Twinkies. If Alice had just kept them down for two more minutes, I would have won the Batman lunchbox I’d been admiring all year. Instead, she threw up in a rose bush and was sent home from school for the day—lucky.

Over the summer, we changed tactics…mainly out of necessity. Alice’s mother started to notice that she had put on a few pounds. Alice wasn’t a thin girl to begin with, but all those Twinkies made that cute little jean-jumper obsolete. So, instead of seeing how much or how fast Alice could consume things, we decided to find out how many things that mouth of hers could hold. We started with the green army men and moved onto jacks. Alice complained that they were too pokey, but our friendship somehow survived our second argument.

You see, no one had ever really paid attention to Alice. She was an only child. Her father traveled for business, and her mother didn’t seem to care much about her. I never heard her talk about grandparents, cousins, or even other friends. So, if what Alice was doing seemed weird to the other girls at school, it didn’t to Alice. She was flattered by my fascination and enjoyed being the center of her classmate’s attention, even if it was only for a few minutes at a time. That’s why when the grocer’s assistant told us that a man held the world record for holding one hundred and fourteen marbles in his mouth, Alice boldly announced that she could beat it.

When you are eight years old, and your best friend takes a dare, you automatically become their second. I could envision it as clearly as if I was watching a newsreel. Together, Alice and I would perform before a sea of humanity. She would stand with her mouth open wide, like a baby bird’s, as I gently dropped shiny marbles down her gullet. A man dressed like Abraham Lincoln and wearing a top hat would keep a dignified count as I deposited each marble. Then, when we reached the final one—the one that would break the world record—I would hold it high above my head for the crowd to see. Everyone would fall silent. Alice, her eyes shining with joy, would receive the last marble into the pocket of her chipmunk-like cheek, and the crowd would go wild. Alice and I would be swept away on a world tour. And at every port where our boat docked, the press would take our picture as we smiled, holding the winning marbles aloft in a glass jar. It would be spectacular!

But reality is never as beautiful or as vivid as an eight-year-old’s imagination. Alice never performed before a sea of people; instead, we stood on the talent show stage at our local county fair engulfed by the smell of livestock, musty straw, and boiled hot dogs. The audience wasn’t comprised of ardent admirers, but of confused adults and their wide-eyed offspring, eager for entertainment. One or two classmates filled in at the edge of a crowd consisting of roughly thirty people, but no one noteworthy was there—aside from the grocer’s assistant. Alice’s dad had come, but he began to look a little sick once she reached sixty marbles, and I didn’t think he’d stick around for the finale.

As I nervously counted the marbles that Alice tucked in her mouth, an older boy dashed up the steps. He began to shout out each number I muttered, stealing my spotlight, and dashing my dreams of world travel.

When she reached ninety marbles, beads of sweat began to form on the circumference of Alice’s red face. The sun seared through the marbles as she lifted them above her mouth, and a little ball of light would rush inside her ahead of each one. (When she keeled over later, I thought that’s what did it. I had heard of sun poisoning and figured you got it from swallowing too much sunlight.)

“One hundred,” the boy yelled, but Alice’s eyes didn’t sparkle at all. She looked scared but determined; she had said she could do it, and she was going to do it.

“Hundred ten!” He screamed out the number, and Alice jumped a little. I wanted to punch that boy. If he made us lose a world record, it would be worse than losing to Tommy Fuller!

“Don’t listen to him, Alice. You’re almost there; just get those last five in!” I shouted my encouragement over the boy’s frenzied whoops.

Alice’s eyes were red and swollen with tears. She was breathing funny, and her nose was beginning to run. Her dad came hurrying toward the stage, and a look of panic swept over Alice’s face. She glanced at the boy, looked at her dad, then at me, and the last thing that chubby little hand did was to shove those final five marbles into her mouth, jamming them in like a starving hobo eats a biscuit.

And she did it! She fit one hundred and fifteen marbles in her mouth! Then Alice’s legs crumpled, and she fell backward. Her head hit the wooden platform and marbles spewed out of her like a mini water fountain.

I didn’t find out what happened to Alice until the next day when my mom got a call from our teacher, inviting all students to a memorial service that was to be held for Alice after school…that’s how I learned that my best friend had died. But I was surprised to learn that it wasn’t because of the light she ingested, or the one hundred and fifteen marbles in her mouth. No, Alice had been stung by a bee in the middle of her performance, and like a champ, she had never saida word.

It took time for me to process this tragedy, probably a few weeks or more; then, suddenly, everything became clear. Of course! Of course, this had to happen! All superheroes had weaknesses. There’s something about being super-human that also made them super vulnerable.

Alice had swallowed sunlight, and whole Twinkies, and broke world records. At eight years old, she was nearly unstoppable, and it was at the height of her triumph that she was struck down unfairly.

My friend had died a hero’s death, and I alone knew—as Superman had kryptonite, Alice Henderson had bees.