Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

A quote: “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” ~~ Albert Camus

I’ll start with a story …

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I wake with a start to the sound of children’s laughter and panic that I haven’t been watching, that someone will see them unsupervised and …

But I look out to the piles of drifting leaves and no one is there. The quiet out here on the porch is broken by a soft woof from Roxy to let me know no danger is near.

I scratch her ears, step inside to light the lamps and wait for David and the children to return from hunting. Life isn’t easy and I’m still unlearning my old fears but …

I’m content.

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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe stock standard license

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4 Comments
  • Cameron says:

    Tech detox takes about a month and is utter hell for parents. You have to deal with the child not having a phone or tablet. But we live outside of town so we have some advantages. Chores wear them out and make them focus on other things. We homeschool now and force their minds to work the way they should.

    But that noise you hear outside? I sent them out to spread leaves around the lawn and figured that human nature would win. I’ll feign ignorance with the delay in getting the work done and have some hot chocolate ready.

  • Fletch says:

    He didn’t know how, not really. Gail had dropped them into his lap: two little girls – one nine, the other seven. What did he know about raising kids? He’d lived alone since he was 16. Done for himself. Washed his own clothes. Got a job as janitor at the local school back in ’67.

    He looked at them. They looked at him. He didn’t mean to. Maybe frustration more than anything, but he picked up a rake-full of leaves and dropped it on them. And they giggled. Giggling is nice. He hadn’t heard giggling before.

    They all remember that day now. They remember the rake and the leaves. The way the girls tell it is that’s the day they all became a family. Looking back, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  • Leigh Kimmel says:

    Piles of golden leaves lay under the trees that overlooked the lakes. Although ginkgo trees were more closely related to the redwoods that surrounded Sparta Point than the maples and oaks back home, Elaine wanted her children to have the fun of raking and playing in leaves the way she and her siblings had done at that age.

    Her husband was standing nearby, pistol at hand. This was still lion country, and Spartan’s military training made him the best fitted to stand sentry against inquisitive mountain lions. He’d agreed to fire a warning shot first, to scare the beautiful cats away, but he would not hesitate to kill if need be.

    Elaine hoped that would not be necessary. She wanted her children to experience the innocent joy she remembered, back before the shifts in attitudes about the secret Cold War human biotechnology experiments that had enabled her to live instead of being born only to die. When she and Spartan had married, they’d both agreed that no child of theirs would be raised to live a life of apologizing for existing. And if certain people out there didn’t like the thought of these children running and playing and enjoying life just like ordinary children, they could just pound sand.

    A shrill call drew her attention skyward, just in time to see a bald eagle soaring above the water, glorious, majestic, a reminder that she must not despair for the future of the Republic.

  • Dupin says:

    They wanted to help.

    I wasn’t sure they were old enough yet. You know kids these days, in front of the tv or playing video games instead of outside, but my son and daughter seemed to do well with the grands, so I got them rakes and turned them loose.

    They quickly demonstrated ten wrong ways to rake, but I sat and sipped my beer. The leaves somehow turned into a pile, and now they were playing in them.

    My son came out and watched a moment.

    “They do know they’ll have to get all that back into a pile?”

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