Friday
Friday Flash Prompt: Face Your Inner Child
Write a flash from the perspective of a child (doesn’t have to be first person. Also, the character can be an older child). Really try to capture the feelings, thoughts, and voice of the character. Get inside the head of someone younger and give them something challenging to deal with. Alter their usual day to day life with something that really affects them.
About the Author
Garret Gaudens is an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) candidate at Rosemont College. He enjoys playwriting and is currently nurturing a love affair with flash fiction.
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posted on 26 Apr 2011, 6:00 PM
Eyes on the Prize
I walked sheepishly up to my pop.
“What’s with the bloody lip?” he asked.
When I wouldn’t answer, he raised an eyebrow over the top of the paper and said, “Damn Bob, you got beat up again?” Tears welled up in my eyes and I looked down at the carpet. “See, that just what I’m telling you. You gotta grow a pair. Meet a man’s eyes.” He snapped his paper expertly and made a big deal of folding it neatly. Tossing it on the coffee table he stood, “Let’s go confront that kid!”
We didn’t see my bully, and when the Mr. Softee truck pulled up my dad bought us both cones. We ate our cones as we walked through the apartment complex. Then, to my horror, dad pointed at him, Mark Martin, and began redirecting me across the quad towards the monster. Real low Dad says, “Remember, hold his eye. Don’t you dare look away.”
I stood facing Mark Martin, cone in hand, like a deer in headlights. Although propelled forward by the weight of my dad’s hand on my shoulder I wanted badly to back away from the bully in front of me. When I didn’t speak my father spoke for me. “Look, you gotta stop buggin my kid. What’s your problem kid?”
Martin looked up at my dad, his eyes slid off down me, stopping at the cone then back up to lock eyes with me. I couldn’t hold his gaze. Martin brought his left hand and pushed the soft serve up my nose and all over my cheeks.
“Pussy.” He said and he bolted.
Dad just shook his head. It was a long walk back to the apartment. Upstairs, I shuffled into my room and mechanically began to do tricks with my Yoyo. Dad stood in the doorway, “Stop running from trouble. Grow a pair. Fuckin’ look your problems in the eye. Fuckin’ look at me.” I continued to play with the yoyo. I couldn’t look at him. “Gimme that fucking thing.” I watched him stride down the hallway slam the yoyo down on the coffee table rattling the tray of miniature potted cacti. I half closed the door and sat on to my bed. Fuming as my father tried to read his evening paper while Mom nattered endlessly at him from the dining area. He ignored her as long as he could, never once looking up from the paper.
Loud echoing screeches from the kitchen culminating in her trademark, “You are such a DILLDOCK!”
Rustle and slap of his paper, his indignant footsteps towards the front door, “I’m going to go out to get drunk.”
“Aw go ahead you prick.” (Mom’s very eloquent.) She marched into the living room as my father put his hand on the doorknob.
“Maybe I will.”
Mom put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. Her eyes lowered to the coffee table where they stopped on the tray of miniature cacti. A light bulb switched on for both of them. Dad’s face had the “Oh shit!” look while Mom’s sly smile said “Oh yes.” She reached down and began her wind up.
Dad broke his gaze from my Mom’s face and looked at the closet behind him. (The closet was not place to hide, Dad was an amateur cabinet maker and the veneered and louvered doors were his last project. He had yelled at me plenty about the veneer on the doors.) He had just enough time to look back at my mom to see plot the course of her missile and duck. The small potted plant exploded at the spot his head had just been making a deep gouge very visible gouge in the dark veneer. Mom had another cactus in windup. Dad ran back and forth cartoon style but by the fourth cactus he had doubled back and out the front door. Mom locked the deadbolt and stormed off down the hall to the master bedroom. I was bursting with curiosity and as I surveyed the damage I picked up the yoyo and put it back in my pocket.
After all, my Dad shouldn’t have looked away.