Bleeding heart views

 

Another flash fiction piece from a writing exercise. The British courts will rule on the extradition of Assange to the U.S. on Monday. The UN has called for his release.

The prompt for the exercise: These were bizarre views from my bleeding heart grandmother.

Let me explain. My family was super conservative. I mean super conservative except for my mother's mother.

Perhaps Grans was why my mother became conservative. Mom had been dragged to demonstrations until she was 13 when she staged her own sit-down strike at their kitchen table.

She met my father, an uber-Republican at uni. He never saw a tax cut he didn't like. Anyone who wasn't a WASP he considered a foreigner. 

The phone call came the day after Christmas.

"I'm not bailing your mother out of jail again." My father hung up the phone and looked at me mother as he said it.

"What did she do now?" I wish I hadn't asked.

"She was picketing the State Department." I'd forgotten to mention we lived in Washington, D.C. "She saw the Secretary of State and blocked his path.

My mother sank into a chair. "Let's leave her. Teach her a lesson."

"I've got to be getting home." I took my car keys from my pocket knowing I'd be heading for the jail, just as Grans' photo was flashed on Fox News.

"Go Grans!"