A Loss

It wasn’t a loud affair. The way he had used the word “I” to start the conversation, and the tone he did it with, had told it all to her from the beginning.
She was already prepared by the time he was making his point. She’s not even sure exactly what it is she says, but it’s a vague attempt at something cryptic, a mumble in a small voice. The door latches emotionlessly behind him, and she collapses against it and cries to her stupid, quiet self. All that night, she screams at the white walls. And in the morning, she almost feels a little better.

A Race

A shot cracks into the sky as a hundred voices burst out in laughter and excitement. The fence the crowd leans on rattles, and the dust on the ground scrapes as the leather boots shift. A brown pair of eyes meets with the blue ones on a forbidden girl, and the occurrence makes two souls yell in soundless triumph. His big lips smile at her blond braids, and an old man with a thin beard yells “c’mon, Roo!” while a Hispanic voice rasps, “go, gallo, go!” The thirty-second annual Littleton Springs Rooster Race is on.

A Broom

Scritch. Scratch. Oscar looks up at the giggling across the street and wrinkles his forehead disapprovingly. Scritch. Scratch. He exhales heavily, and wipes the sweat from his hands on his mechanic’s uniform. He leans the broom against the wall and stands in front of the whirring swamp cooler before leaning into the open door. His dry lips smack as he opens them. “Closing time!”

A Betrayal

Jonathan Christopher Clark-McCoy sits impatiently on a park bench, his stubby fingers drumming away at a noiseless tune. His plastic dinosaurs, their entertainment value temporarily spent, lie scattered around him. The one that says “myah!” and the one that says “grurr!” and the one that says “yomp!” and, his favorite, the one that says “mewp!” The entire Cretaceous period is on hold, though, after the wily, mischievous laugh of a girl finds its way to his ears. He unobtrusively invites her to come over: “Hey! Girl!”

And she does.

“You wanna play with Mewp?”

She pulls her wedgie in objection.

“I think I love you,” John says truthfully.

She scratches her hair. “Okay.” She turns around and leaves him to his sitting.

John suddenly screams and starts sobbing. The girl gets back to her friend and the sandbox. “Wha’d you do to him?” he asks. She fights his shovel with a green plastic Hypsilophodon.

“Mewp! Mewp!”