No One Was Going to Mess with Her Kid.

Kate hated Halloween. Bad things often happened, like when her mother found a razor blade in an apple, or when Jimmy Howard set her witch’s wig on fire with his stupid sparkler, or when Frankie Gleason stole her bag of candy and shared it with his friends, or when David unexpectedly dumped her to go on a mission trip to Africa. It was also the night she planned to tell him she was pregnant with his child.

But that was the past, and Kate wasn’t going to let the bad things that happened to her spoil Halloween for her daughter. This year, like the past nine, she and Melissa would dress up and go to the Town Common where everyone gathered for games, and rides, and food, and music. Melissa chose to be Albert Einstein, a fitting costume given her recent report card. She looked so cute with her auburn hair teased out and powdered white. Kate purchased a set of doctor’s scrubs, a white coat, and a black bag at a second-hand store. It wasn’t because she had any affinity for doctors. It was because of all the rapes and robberies and shootings during the past year. The bag provided the perfect place to hide the .38 Special revolver and extra ammunition.

Ready for the evening, Kate adjusted a black strand of the wig that made her look like George Stephanopoulos, then pointed her finger at the mirror as if holding a gun, pulled the imaginary trigger, her finger recoiling just as the gun had at the range, and imagined the tiny missile racing to its target. She blew on the end of her finger and put it in a nonexistent holster.

“Let’s go, Sweetie,” Kate yelled. “We don’t want to miss the Mayor’s opening speech about being safe and having fun.”

Waiting

First published in Issue 16 of Vine Leaves Literary Journal.

We waited. Two brothers. Unrelated. He the elder.

The crash brought us together. His older brother and mine drag racing on a residential street. My mother and his parents had to be separated, faces red, fingers wagging, shouts filling the small waiting room, surging into the hallways.

He and I—I didn’t know his name, we hadn’t talked—stayed out of the way, quiet, almost like we were meditating. He laid his hand on the floor palm up. I put mine on top of his. Sweaty, nervous fingers entwined.

When the doctors came, we listened. Our parents began another verbal assault amidst their sobs. We squeezed our fingers tighter and cried. I didn’t know if my tears were because my brother lived or his didn’t.

Yet Again

 Another one sentence story from a prompt.

The hellish voice, muffled as if strained through cotton or crushed glass, spread across the barren playground at twilight, blunting the failing sunlight, chasing the moon behind clouds overburdened with tears, filling the void with the sound of a parent who lost a child to another act of senseless violence. (50 words)

Prompt words: cotton, voice, hellish, glass, playground

Frozen

My attempt at a one sentence story.

Karen hesitated, the fiddle in the middle of the street, its neck broken, strings askew, a reminder of the baby stroller that once carried her daughter Chloe, the two of them laughing, gurgling, unafraid to cross the street.

Free At Last

Ella hated shoes. They hurt. It was also the way she felt about work, and boyfriends, and sex.

Even now in her late twenties, Ella liked going to playgrounds. She was too big for the slide but could soar on the swings, and hand-walk the monkey bars, and not worry about other things. Today, though, she did worry about other things. Things like her mother’s cancer, and her sister’s divorce, and her new boss, who would touch her and look at her the same way he did when she was the receptionist in the marketing department.

At the apex of one swing, staring into the cloudless sky, Ella decided what she should do. After dismounting, she removed her running shoes and socks, left them near the slide, and skipped to her car, arms raised, her body twirling in the breeze.

Ella scampered past her VW Bug into the woods, laughing. She began to sing a melody she’d never heard before, removed her blouse and slacks, then bra and panties as she roamed deeper into the darkness. Ella was free—free to do whatever she wanted.

The roar of the waterfall tickled Ella’s ears, made her laugh again. She ran to the edge of the falls, took several deep breaths, and looked down. A mist covered the pool at the bottom. With giggles circling her head, she leapt toward the foaming water, her arms spread wide, back arched, legs together, toes pointed, just like her diving instructor had taught her. Ella’s mind and body relaxed, she entered the cleansing water.

Three days later a family hiking the valley found Ella’s body draped on a rock.