These Lines Challenge

Rather than go with the typical stipulation that you use a given line as the first line, this time we're going to just require you use a given line anywhere in your story.

Your challenge:

Select one or more of the following lines and use them in your story.

Do not alter the line, except:

• you may change he or she to a character's name (or the reverse)


• you may change pronouns to I/me/my/mine should you choose to write in the first person POV


• you may add a clause before or after the text of the given line for a longer sentence

a. "Gibson, he looks just like you!"

b. "Here," the young woman said, holding out the baby, "Take your grandchild."

c. Although it was absurd, while looking at the colorful Easter eggs she couldn't help but think of her own ova again.

d. "Wave to daddy," Monica encouraged her son.

e. "I should have known that a child of Alex Krycek's would be nothing but trouble," Mulder groused.

f. The triplets made it almost all the way through their first day of preschool before the director called.

g. She looked exactly like Emily would have, had Emily lived longer.

h. It wasn't the first allegedly haunted dorm he'd looked into, and he had a feeling it wouldn't be the last.

i. The heavy regimen of anti-psychotics they had the boy on did nothing to change the fact that the things he said he saw were in fact real.

j. This Father's Day would be so different, he thought. OR This Mother's Day would be so different, she thought.

k. "I want a bedtime story, please, the one about the flukeman."

l. When both of the little ones were crying this way, an hour felt like an afternoon.

m. "Leave it to you, Skinner, to father a newborn with a full head of hair."

n. Being a pregnant man actually wasn't so bad, he reflected, as long as he didn't allow himself to dwell on the thought of how they'd eventually get the baby out. OR "No, you don't understand," she said, gesturing at both her own belly and his, "We're pregnant."

o. When it was first born no one really thought the alien-human hybrid would live, but it had.

p. Petie McNulty had been celebrating his 14th birthday the day it had happened.

q. They'd always known that a child of theirs would be special, but they never expected THIS.

r. When the man who had just shot the boy's mother demanded to know whose child the crying grade schooler was, she immediately yelled "he's mine!" and pulled him to her and her own children.

s. It dawned on her that the ghost her terrified son was describing sounded almost exactly like her late mother.

t. If there was one thing she knew about giving birth again, it was that this time Mulder would be by her side when the time came.

u. "Mom," Jackson croaked, practically falling into her arms when she opened the door.

v. "Jackson," Mulder said with a heavy sigh, "stop tormenting your sister with mental images of monsters - I don't care if she did ruin your game."

w. "It's not that we don't want you to have a kitten, Sweetheart, it's just this one is a cat sìth kitten and not pet material," Scully explained to the disappointed child.

x. Child-rearing during a pandemic presented its own challenges.

y. "Melvin Frohike is your father?" she gasped, staring at the 6' tall teenager.

z. "Of course I didn't dress them just alike as babies," Scully patiently explained, "William's twin is a girl."

Fics for this challenge:

In the Here and Now by shadowfoxsmate