This week's writing contest was a little different. 750 words, no style or genre set. The only rule? You had to have a character named Verity and use the word disambiguation somewhere.

...

Trinity

Sasha was bored. No one told her journalism could be boring. It looked like fun; travelling the world, tossing out breaking news stories like candy to kindergarten kids. The reality was a lot less travelling, a shit tonne more boring research. Her boss had sent her to go find a topic for a fluff piece, one of those sappy, feel good bits to toss in between the real news stories. It was an unwritten rule, there had to be a bit about puppies or rainbows to lighten up the gloom and doom. So here she was looking for what she called a cupcake story. All sugary frosting and sprinkles, one bite and its gone.

An hour later she was on her way to Mercy General Hospital to meet the newest members of her cupcake club, notebook and digital camera stowed in her carry bag. She’d found her story, triplets, fresh out of the womb and cute as can be. Better yet, they were conjoined twins with an unexpected brother, incredibly rare. As she pulled into the parking lot she was already lining up the story in her mind, the same as a hundred others she’d written.

The front desk sent her over to Maternity, the directions almost unnecessary as she followed the sound of squalling infants & the cloying scent of baby powder down the grim, dingy halls. She checked her notes again and tracked down the right room, stepping into a sea of chipped pink tile and cramped spaces. Bed after bed filled with exhausted women recovering from childbirth, their babies all stashed in cribs beside them. “Trina Henderson?” She called softly. There was a shift in the bed down by the window and a hand waved.

“That’s me.” She was young, still fighting with acne and her hair was dyed so many colours her natural one would be impossible to guess.

“Hello mommy cupcake,” Sasha thought as she put on her best smile and crossed the room. “Hi there, I’m Sasha Porter, I write for the Daily Reporter. We wanted to do a story on you and your new family.”

“Hi.” The girl smiled back. “That’d be cool. I’ve never talked to a reporter before.” She waved a pale hand towards two cribs where the babies were sleeping and gestured for Sasha to come closer. “Call me Trinity, no one calls me Trina. Isn’t that cool? I call myself Trinity and I get three babies! It’s like kismet or something.”

She leaned down and stroked the head of the baby who slept alone. “This one was a hell of a surprise for everyone. They told me they were tangled up like sardines you know, so they didn’t know he was in there. Anyway, this here is Dis, and these two beauties are Ver and Bella.” She gestured to the conjoined twins and tugged away the blanket gently to reveal that they were joined almost completely, a thick and distorted torso supporting two heads, both asleep.

Sasha quelled her curiosity and merely nodded, trying not to stare at the mishappen lifeforms lying there. “Interesting names, which one is which?”

“I don’t know.” Trinity shrugged and gave Sasha a strange smile.

Sasha tried to regain her mental equilibrium as a voice in the back of her mind started to snicker. “Great, a fruitcake instead of a cupcake.”

“Did you forget which is which?”

“No, but they’re two halves of the same whole, like truth and beauty, you know?”

“I don’t think I follow you Trinity.”

“It’s a quote from some poet dude, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, and that’s all you need to know.’ So they’re like the same, separate but together. So I called them Bella for beauty and Verity for truth, and their brother is Dis.”

“Okay, so the names are interchangeable?” Sasha took some notes as she tried to stifle the mental snickering still going on somewhere in the back of her mind. “Then what’s Dis mean?”

“Oh that’s easy, I asked the nurses what was a word for defining two things that mean the same. You know, ‘cause he was the different one in there with them. So I called him what they told me was the right word.”

Sasha looked down at the little boy and wondered what the hell his life was going to be like with this wacko for a mother. “So what did you call him?”

“His name is Disambiguation, wicked cool huh?”