Flash Fiction

A writer friend and I sat down for the first time in too long to write the day before Christmas.

When cafés were open, we'd pick a person than free write about them. Sometimes what we saw was similar: sometimes the two pieces bore no resemblance to one another.

With tea rooms and cafés closed, we thought we might buy a hot chocolate and sit in the church plaza but it was too cold. Instead we settled at my dining room table.

I grabbed a novel. We took turns opening to a page at random, shutting our eyes and putting a finger on a sentence we used as a prompt. 

We then wrote for about ten minutes. Here are my exercises. The first line if the prompt. 

"What am I going to do?"

I look for a spare seat in the food court. The back of a woman's head with long blond hair, was at the only table where three seats were available.

Only after I asked if I could sit, did I realize it was my husband's ex.

Or was it? It had been ten years since I'd seen her in court when we fought for custody of Paul's kids. He'd won.

I'd become the stepmother, not wicked.

Carol had been a drug addict. Paul and I had given the kids stability.

In court she'd been high, looking like a body that had forgotten to be buried.

Should I ask the woman, "Carol?" or should I walk away.

"Sit down, it you want. The mall is a mad house today," the woman said.

I did, wondering how fast I could scarf my taco and guacamole.

"It's not good to eat so fast," the woman said. 

I couldn't tell if it were Carol's voice. It had been ten years at least since I'd seen her. Had she been able to pull herself together?

"Don't I know you?" she asked.

"He takes a chance and scuttles crabwise into the shelter of the pier."

He wasn't alone. Crabs were everywhere. 

He started filming. He'd already filmed the goldfish in his partner's aquarium. He'd watched documentaries of whales, dolphins, sharks and octopi. 

In the ballet studio, he'd transferred their movements to ballet steps and found the right music to match. He wanted the music for the crabs to be forbidding.

He copied their movements in the wet sand.

"Whatcha doing mister?" Two little girls holding pails and shovels were watching. Their knees were covered in wet sand.

"Choreographing, er designing, a ballet. Would like to dance like a crab?"

They nodded. Moving from under the pier, the three of them did their strange movements.

"What's your ballet called?" the older girl asked.

"Under the sea," he said.

 

"And the all work?"

Lana knew that she shouldn't have asked this the minute she saw Tom's face.

He slammed the screwdriver into the wooden work bench so hard the wood splintered and stormed out of the basement. She heard him stomping overhead, a door slam and his car engine start.

When would she learn that anything could set him off?

How many times did an innocent question or sentence lead to fight?

Last week when she said dinner would be ten minutes late, he'd twisted her arm.

This couldn't go on. 

Not knowing how long he'd be gone, she rushed upstairs, threw her most essential things into a suitcase including the positive pregnancy test reading.

Her mother, living four states away, would understand when she showed up on her doorstep.