No more practice or early entries, Flash for Friday, July 19th, 2013 in July 19th 2013 Flash friday

Ok, because it’s Friday and I have a few minutes before rushing around like Englishmen and mad dogs in the noon day son, I thought I’d bang out a quick flash for actual Friday. Again, forgive the rustiness. I spent the last year embroiled in some serious non-fiction drama/comedy. The drama was mild, but the comedy divine.

Again, this raw the way that flashes are, and unedited.

frog robe quilt coal ice sweetie --- AmygDala Prompts

Prompts; Stork-bundle-idea --- shizknit

“How are you sweetie?” I knelt down so we were eye level.

“I’m dead” she said in that matter of fact way kids have tilting her head sideways because maybe that’s what dead girls do.

“Dead? Cold as a bundle of Ice?”

Her mom broke in “We were in the park, at the playground, you know. Laurelhurst, gone to feed the ducks and …”

“I saw this bird. She was dead.”

I wrote that down, mostly just to put the fear of god into mom, but either way I wrote the report, that was the objective truth of it.

“Awww, sweetie,” I said putting a warm hand on her shoulder.

“We buried her.”

I looked up the mom. “No, not me, I tried to get her away. It was some kid ---“

“Kerry,” the little girl interjected.

“A friend?” I asked.

“She is now.”

“It was just another girl at the park,” the mother said, nervous, “Would you like a cup of coffee? Tea?”

“No thank you.”

I wrote down ‘Attachment disorder?’ and underlined it. It was just an idea.

“Wanna see my room?”

“Please.”

I added another line and another question mark. I had just taken the case, this was the first time we’d met. I called her sweetie because Amanda was too personal for a stranger. I was too close to playing shrink and asking what being dead was like. I had to keep my boundaries, asking now was testing her imagination and leading a morbid fascination.

She showed me her dolls, her favorite stuffed bear, the little tea set she served her stuffed animals with, and then she pointed to the bed.

“My mom made that quilt. I mean my real mom.”

I wrote real mom down and underlined it five times.

“She’s dead.”

The file was two books twelve inches thick, I had only skimmed it, but I knew enough to know the woman biting her nails in the doorway was listed as her biological mom. This was a home visit, the last before recommending the State bowed out of these people’s lives.

“Did you cry?”

“Not yet. I will when Kerry comes to help me bury her.”

“Burial is important to you sweetie.”

“It’s how the soul rests, don’t you know anything?”

“Not much,” I said “Not nearly enough.”