I was going through some files tonight on my laptop while taking a break from working on this academic book. I came across this piece of microfiction. I wrote it last summer. It was one of my fave pieces of micro. Tweaked it tonight. Wanted to share.

Waiting

On the blue-reds. He said they were coming for me. Mom pitters through the house, cleaning. She doesn’t want them to see dishes piled up on the dining table. I sit at the table, fingers pounding on laptop keys. I, too, have cleaned. Washed my face. Threw a bra on. Socks and shoes. I wait. We wait. For the cops to come, to hear the whoop-whoop and see flashing blue-reds let the whole neighborhood know that there is trouble at our house again. I’m scared. Don’t show it. Everyone has hit him, at least once, except me. I’ve been away at school. Now I’m here and Father’s alcoholic, violent words scrap my brain. Hammer, he said as soon as he came home. We playing UNO. He walks in talking ‘bout hammers and putting one in my brother’s head. Go away, we say. I will kill every last one of you, he replies. He heads upstairs, screaming “Bring it!” Over and over. “Bring it!” he yells for the sixth time. So I did. All 18 years of anger, of remembered good times shadowed over by broken bad times. I brought it, to his bedroom, my fists clinging to his shirt as I shook him. My hand across his face. Twice. I felt liberated. Ashamed. The hits told him he didn’t have control over me anymore. Yet he is/was my father. Big me is glad I hit him, let him see the pain he’s caused me. Little me crawls in a corner and cries for what my father has become. For what, as a result, I have become. And so I wait on the blue-reds ‘cause I feel I deserve the punishment.