Category: Friday Fiction

by Smitty

They walked past the arcade on a Friday for, yeah, about the 500th time, with a smile.
Decades ago when the club had had an outing here, her coin jammed in a machine. Full of bravado, he’d hit it with the heel of his hand.
Freed the coin, sure. His eyes had welled with tears as he’d managed to fracture his wrist.
They peered at the boys and girls therein, all waving smart phones at the game sensors to run them. Wasn’t the same.
“Maybe a boy can polish his sweetheart’s screen or something,” he mused aloud, and she laughed.

via Darleen

by Smitty

Swings the heavy door shut, turns the key a final time.
Mother’s illness has been a second womb. The lengthy second gestation is done. She’d been ancient; he, merely old, wife taken by cancer decades ago, only son taken by war, siblings estranged.
Hand lets go of the brass key. He feels liberated. Weight dropping off.
There’s a brew pub on the corner. His tongue almost jumps out of his mouth at the thought of the sweet ale washing away the bitter pain of emotion with the crisp bitterness of hops.
He hasn’t had a beer in what? Decades.
Yes.

via Darleen

by Smitty

[Read Darleen first, as this is a continuation. And Happy Valentine’s Day!]

“Solved it,” said Steve.
“Do tell. What’s that man doing?” Kristy squirmed.
“I was in the Navy. If you interpret arm positions in the pictures as semaphore, you get: ‘WYMM’.”
Blank stare. “Yeah, maybe.”
Steve turned the camera over, revealing a ring cached beneath. Sat Kristy on a chair as he gracefully took a knee, sliding the beautiful band onto her finger, saying “Will you marry me?”
* * *
Years later: “OK, how’d you do that, Steve?”
“Do what?”
“Rig that proposal camera.”
“How did the car break down just ahead of that Yukon road trip?”
“I’m not telling you that.”
“Precisely.”

by Smitty

The girl (later known as Mindy) blowing by, is the penultimate humiliation. Not the first. That’d been the blind runner, seeming to putz along with his guide, casually passing my struggling flesh. No, the final thing was the arch cramp, reducing me to a limping skip for the final miles. But by the power of God, Gu, and ibuprofin, I complete the act of self-torture.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
She’s the job interviewer a week later. The marathon hasn’t come up. Thank heaven. I still ache, everywhere, as the yoga pants turn to leave the room.
Over her shoulder, smiling: “What was your time?”

—
Thanks, Darleen!

by Smitty

Six points gird the star glowing, supernatural above, as the dusk bathes now the field.
A mystic symbol of love, and to Three Wise Men showing, the power of God to yield
a means as mild as a dove; that the world be reconciled to His justice from falling
to sin when serpent beguiled the mother of humans, Eve. This moment was their calling,
Destiny standing revealed, blessed with the joy of knowing. That the virgin could conceive,
a King be born in a humbling place, and not be richly raised, losing the need to believe.
Let us follow their doing, seeking the one who can save, and do that which can be praised.

via Darleen

by Smitty

“Samantha?” she asked into the darkness.
“Mother?” answered the raw voice of her sophomore daughter.
“School?” she inquired, wondering why only the lamp was on in the living room.
“Yeah.”
“Tell me.”
“My Political Science professor went on a rant about 9/11. He said that capitalism is evil and that that ‘freedom fighters’ had courageously held America accountable for all the sins–he said ‘sins!’–we have committed and that, rather than get the message, we made things worse in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“And?”
“Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I screamed ‘My dad died there that day, you sick bastard!'”
—
via Darleen

by Smitty

The knowledge that one has been hoodwinked: they took my cockandballs.

I sit on a step before a temple ruin. My flesh is become a metaphor for it.
A cautionary tale. One should reject every Progressive utterance.
There. Is. No. Corporate. Guilt. Not your country; not your civilization; not your gender.
Their nonsense caught me in college and lasted as long as the decadent drug debauch.
Liberated from manhood, I can only now reject being a victim, and dedicate my remaining heartbeats to opposing Progressive evil wherever it seeks to corrode and destroy that which is good, true, and lasting.
—
Picture via Darleen

by Smitty

Steps onto the porch and freezes.
They come at him from the front and both sides. He’s already used the planter to jump up for a support. Gives the attacker coming from the right a face full of fragrant hibiscus.
(They’ve already rifled the house twice seeking it.)
Lands on the right side of the porch, beside the table. It’s hidden, in plain sight, disguised within a functional ’70s Polaroid.
Hardly time to aim as the thugs coil to spring again.
Points the Illudium Q-36 Space Modulator and fires. A pink flash later, they’re so many atoms.
Seriously, Q: pink?
—
Thanks, Darleen!