Hi all,
hope winter is treating you kindly? Here’s some hot flash fiction to help you cope. Enjoy!
We never saw him again after the day at the beach.
He was the most popular guy in school. We couldn’t believe when he started hanging around with us. And we lost him.
It had been humid for weeks. Had rained just before school finished, the clouds trapping all the moisture. It was like walking around in a sauna. People sweating, even when just sitting around and talking. When they blinked a trail of heavy water rolled down their cheeks.
There was a murder epidemic. People going crazy.
In front of The Arcade (they had one Pac-Man machine, always Out of Order but it was our spot) a red car got blocked by a yellow car. The red car beeped and the guy came over and kept battering at the window until he’d punched through it. Screaming that he didn’t get paid enough. We have videos of it. The guy’s forearms bloody, reaching through the window.
And Erkan approaching, calming him down. He talked to him, took him back to his car. A man got the woman in the red car out, took her to hospital. Someone else must have called the police.
It was always women that summer, I don’t know why. I was 12, more likely to fight with other boys. But it was women who suffered in the madness.
A week before school was to start, long after we had given up hope, the clouds lifted. I woke one day, wondering what looked so strange. It was the light. The sun was out. My eyes weren’t crying, I wasn’t damp with moisture. It was the most wonderful feeling.
We went to the beach to swim.
Past The Arcade, past where the yellow car had bashed the red car and onto the rough, warm sand of our beach. We lived north of town so the beach was small. But we were all friends and there were no tourists. We rolled our jeans and t shirts up and splashed into the water.
The air was dry. We had a plastic football. Threw it too hard at each other’s faces. Wiped salt water out of our eyes. And Erkan joined us.
The most popular boy in school. He’d been working at his father’s office. He was destined for great things. It was only a matter of time before he would expect us to bring him coffee or mow his lawn or fix his toilet.
But today he was just another boy. Hot and tired form a long summer. He joined us in the water and we threw the ball too hard at his face. He wiped salt out of his eyes.
It might have been me who hit him first.
Rich Erkan. Lucky Erkan. Erkan who was famous as a hero for saving the woman.
The sun blinded me. I shouted. I remember that.
And the other boys came over. I remember that.
He held his hands up to calm us down. I remember his hands in the air.
But we were in the water, so we didn’t have our phones.
Maybe if someone had recorded what happened I would remember the rest.
The prompts were the picture above and the random word ‘scissors’ for the title.
Not too many scissors in the story, I admit. But I was thinking about the gap between rich and poor. I knew my narrator was poor right from the beginning. There were more hints in the original piece such as him and his friends needing to rely on The Arcade’s free Wifi.
And that’s got something to do with scissors, does it?
Yes! Because then there’s Erkan, who’s quite well off.
Go on…
So I was thinking about the gap between rich and poor.
My bus will be here in a minute!
And in German the phrase for ‘the gap’ between rich and poor is ‘die Schere’ – the scissors.
It is!
It is!
