**A/N: Alright, so I've been battling with Writer's Block lately, so I'm only about 1/2 way through my latest chapter of What Is Truly Meant To Be: A Hey Arnold Musical. But then I saw that the Hey Arnold Creative group on facebook is doing a daily writing challenge. I missed last month's drawing challenge - because I can't draw stick figures - so I decided to give the writing challenge a go. A) I'm a writer (doi) and B) hopefully, forcing myself to do daily prompts will break through the Writer's Block. We'll see how it goes.

THIS WILL SIMPLY BE AN ANTHOLOGY OF THE DAILY PROMPTS AND BY NO MEANS DO THE CHAPTERS NECESSARILY RELATE TO EACH OTHER UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED IN THE AUTHOR'S NOTES.

Each new chapter will be its own One Shot Story based on that day's prompt. The prompt will be that chapter's title. Since I don't know the prompts I don't know where my writing will lead so please be careful to check daily to see if I had to upgrade the rating.

If you want to join in on the challenge, go to:

pinklotus27. deviantart journal/ 30-DAYS-WRITING-CHALLENGE-311869246
OR
www. facebook groups/ HeyArnoldCreativeIdeas/

And now the glorious disclaimer for this anthology: Hey Arnold is the intellectual property of Craig Bartlett and is owned by Nickelodeon.

Without further ado, my entry for Day One of the challenge.**

Ripped Apart
ONE SHOT STORY

A half-forgotten comic book sat in the back of the closet. It was ratty, well read, the page edges were bent and wrinkled, and the whole thing was tucked safely inside a collector's sealed bag.

"Gerald?" A soft voice called out for the twenty-four-year-old. As he entered the bedroom he looked at his gorgeous fiancée kneeling in front of the closet.

Phoebe had luggage laid out across the floor and clothing in piles around her, she was in the middle of packing for their upcoming cruise when she found the lonely comic book.

She pulled it out of its hiding spot and passed it over to Gerald. "Why on earth do you have such a destroyed comic book tucked in the closet?"

Gerald's heart sank and his breath left him. He took the comic from Phoebe's hand and lowered himself on to their bed, his eyes never once leaving the precious memento.

With the tenderness of a father holding his newborn, Gerald removed the artwork from its packaging and gingerly flipped through the tattered pages. His vision became blurred with tears.

"I almost forgot about this. It's my favorite comic; the last one Arnold and I bought."

Phoebe sat next to him on the bed and gave him a confused look. "The front cover is missing, what happened?"

"It's more than the front cover; it's the entire first half of the book."

Phoebe took a closer look at the comic. The first panel had what appeared to be the middle of a fight. Both characters were already pretty beaten up, another was knocked out, and a girl was screaming for them all to stop.

Phoebe scanned the whole page, but nothing made sense to her coming in half-way like that. Gerald tried to explain the characters to her, but it only made things worse because apparently the two characters getting ready to kill each other were best friends throughout the rest of the series, and the woman yelling for them all to stop had died in the previous issue.

"I'm very confused," she admitted, "What on earth happened to make this fight break out among what are supposed to be friends? And how is the woman there if she's dead?"

"I don't know," Gerald admitted, "I never read the first half of the comic. I have no clue how Janice dying and Marc and Nathan swearing to avenge her last issue lead to them trying to kill each other here."

"Well, what happened to the first half of the comic? Also, why keep it around instead of buying a whole one?"

"Arnold. For both answers." A sad smile crept across Gerald's mouth. "We had just learned that his parents were moving back down to San Lorenzo, and he was going with. We had no clue when we'd see each other again. We decided to spend our last day together doing some of our favorite things, including buying the latest issue of 'DeathLake'. However, as is always the case, our day didn't go exactly as planned, we got to the store pretty late, and there was only one left by the time we made it to the store that day. Arnold suggested that we pool our money to buy it together."

Gerald rubbed his hand across the well-loved comic and fondly recalled his best friend. "But before we got around to reading it, his parents came to pick him up. I offered for him to just take the comic and that I'd buy another one when the store got more. Instead, Arnold swore he wouldn't read it without me, and ripped the book in half."

Phoebe rested a hand on Gerald's knee, and gave a gentle squeeze. She sat silently and listened intently as her fiancé finished his story.

"He told me that this way he'll never know the ending of the story without me. That without hanging out with me again the story will never be complete. He promised that one day we'd meet up again and we could finally read the comic together, like we intended to do that day."

Gerald put the comic book back in to the bag and sealed it. "I may have caved in and read how the story ended, but I never went back to look for another copy so I knew how it began. I'm completely lost without Arnold."

He gave a sad chuckle, "Nice little metaphor, huh?"

Phoebe kissed Gerald on the forehead, "It is indeed a beautiful metaphor. I'm also sure that you will read the whole comic someday."

She gave him a soft, soothing smile and he held her tight. Yes, perhaps he will read the full comic with Arnold someday. Just like they promised each other all those years ago.

**A/N: Yeah, I have no clue where Arnold is or why he and Gerald haven't met up in like a decade, I just ran with it...

I only spent like 30minutes on this - all I could afford - and I was passing out while doing so. Maybe that's the trick, nearly pass out and don't proofread. :P

Anyway, I just REALLY wanted to avoid using Helga and Arnold for this angst-ridden prompt. I knew that nearly everyone would go there. I was going to do another couple, but nothing seemed to work. I then switched gears. Barely anyone does stories about how Arnold's leaving Hillwood (if you go by The Patakis cannon) would affect anyone other than Helga, so I ran with it.

I instantly knew that I wanted "Ripped Apart" to reference both Arnold being ripped away from Gerald as well as a physical item ripped. I just couldn't decide on what to use. I went through baseball card, photo, autographed picture, movie stub, etc. When I finally landed on comic book everything just sort of clicked.

I also was originally going with Gerald and Arnold meeting up after years apart and surprising each other with the second half of the ripped object, but the story ended up not going in that direction. Silly stories writing yourselves...

Well, off to Day Two of the challenge.**