WORTH 50,000: DAY ELEVEN - Gnawed free.

[momebie]

[Source.]


Usually, they think he lost it in the war. He lets them keep the gruesome fantasies playing behind their well-meaning eyes, because it's not his place to take them. He's full up with his own anyway. In truth, he lost it when he was too young to fight for his country, but just old enough to start fighting for himself.

Jack and the twentieth century turned fourteen on the same day, a full six months before the war broke out abroad. The ground was hard, the lake was freezing, and man who raised him was trying in vain to claw his way back to the surface from where he'd fallen through the ice. It was the easiest thing in the world to hold him under. The cold even stopped cutting into this skin after a while.

When he finally ran for help, no one asked for questions about his limp, blue-tinged arm or how the crazy drunk had fallen through in the first place. They only wrapped him in blankets and put him to rest while the adults worked it out. They took his exhaustion for grief and in their willful ignorance taught him a lesson that would see him through into adulthood.

People who think themselves too important to look down, can trip over almost anything.

Comments

[seratonation.livejournal.com]

holy shit that was not where i thought it was going! the whole thing is awesome, I'd love to know more about Jack, how his life turned out after that

[momebie.livejournal.com]

I would like to know more about him too! I only got that far in my thinking, but he's obviously dressed well, or at least a facsimile of well, so he's taken this lesson and run with it, using it to his advantage. I wonder what he's outrunning between November 1918 and October 1929, and what would happen if all of the artifice fell apart?

[theemdash]

BRB, CLAWING MY FACE OVER THIS ONE.

Also, for all your, "I can't write short stories".... This is a short story. That's it. The only thing you need is to specify what the "it" is in the first sentence so that it works without the picture.

You have flash fiction, go find somewhere to send it.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

HM. I feel like it would need more color before I sent it. Setting and details, you know? But that's probably part of my problem. I'll edit it up to something I feel is more complete and shoot it your way. Then I can work on seeing is somewhere will publish it.

[theemdash]

If you feel it should be fleshed out some, do so, of course, but that's the story right there. A few hints as to the relationship and that's all you need in a flash piece.