One Flash Fiction Piece by Susan Tepper

 

FUN by Susan Tepper

 

“I’m starving,” I tell him. “Let’s look for a hot dog truck.”

But I don’t see any food trucks nearby. It’s a damp shivery day and I’m afraid of the men with the army boots and hoods that stomp around flattening the wet grass into a mud slide.  The women, too. Loud and screechy and like my mom’s age. If my mom knew she’d skin me alive. About other things, too.

“I love when they grill the hot dogs really well done,” I say.

“You’ll have to wait.”  He tugs on the brim of his hat pulling it down tighter till I almost can’t see his eyes.  Blue. Sometimes grey.  Sometimes ice.  It all depends.

“We had no breakfast,” I say. “I thought for sure there’d be food when we got here.  Otherwise I would’ve brought some Granola Bars.”  I slip my arm through his trying to keep steady as the crowd lunges this way and that.  “Don’t let go of me,” I say.

“Things are starting to heat up.  I don’t want to miss out on the action.”

He’s nineteen. Three years older than me. When ‘the bug’ hit he left college. He calls it ‘the bug’ though I know better. I read the headlines on the newspapers racked near the express check-out when there’s a lull at work.

I squeeze my arm tighter against him. I knew this was a mistake. I always know when things have gone too far then it’s too late to turn back. I also know I can’t say this out loud.  “Are you having fun?”  I say.

 

Susan Tepper is a twenty year writer and the author of nine published books of fiction and poetry.  Her most recent are a poetry chap CONFESS (Cervena Barva Press, 2020) and a funky road novel WHAT DRIVES MEN (Wilderness House Press, 2019). Currently, she’s in pre-production of an Off-Broadway Play she wrote and titled ‘The Crooked Heart’ based on artist Jackson Pollock in his later years. www.susantepper.com