Little Bradley
Flash Fiction Story
by Mary Anne Griffiths
Bradley lives just three farms away and smells of smoked Hungarian sausages just like me. He has a lot of nice freckles and when he smiles his face is like a speckled moon. He takes out his lunch pail and flips the metal clasps up, over Fred, Wilma, Pebbles and Dino's funny purple face. We all eat our sandwiches together, sometimes tearing off the crusts or trading the PBJ’s for the ketchup and cheese ones. Our thermoses sit carefully on our desktops. Grape Freshie and milk nice and cold in the glassy silver interior. We eat quickly to get to the fruit cups and puddings, walk up to the garbage can and drop the lids in without licking them, although we want to. Someone unwraps a brownie their mom made or makes crinkly noises with the wrap of a Joe Louis. We sit still, munching our Twinkies, digging out the cherries from the fruit cocktails. Bradley reaches in his pail and pops open a can of Fresca. He takes three sips and plunges his little hand back in his Flintstones lunch pail. He takes out a small square of paper, a little bottle and a needle. He rubs the paper over the bottle, sticks the needle in and pulls on it. Then he lifts up his shirt and puts it in his stomach. We all stop and smile because Bradley told us this saves his life. “It’s my dessert,” he says, pressing on the needle while it is still in his belly.
Now I am 21 and walking home after classes. In a European butcher’s window is a display of lunch meats and tinned anchovies. Hard, dark sausages and hocks hang from a rack above the counter where the deli help’s hands move under the glass picking up slices of salami. I walk a few steps down the street and I see a man slumped in a corner of two buildings. He is putting a needle in his arm and smiling. I tell myself he is having dessert. It is saving his life. There is something of a full moon in his face filling up his eyes.
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