Click -- Short Fiction

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This is an excerpt from my short fiction Click published in this year's Progenitor, Arapahoe Community College's art and literary journal.

She missed them. All of them. Her fine, serious, hard-working father. He was a cowboy. A real cowboy. His hat sweat stained and misshapen from rain and snow and worse. All from work, not bought new looking like that. What did some singer know about hats like that? They might know about hard living, but what did they know about hard work?

She could still see him and her momma two-stepping around the VFW Hall.

She didn’t understand how she’d become who she was. They’d never had much, but it always seemed they’d had enough. They just knew how to make things come out right.

Click.

She muted the TV. The sports news and a rerun that wasn’t that funny the first time it aired came and went. She didn’t care about sitcoms with their nice houses and fine clothes and stupid problems. She was waiting for 9:59. She touched the ticket nestled in her pocket.  Six numbers – 6, 23, 27, 42, 54, and 9.

The woman with the machines that spat out five white balls and one red ball appeared on the screen.

Click.

She turned the sound back on. The announcer said, “23.” She had that number, but one match paid exactly nothing unless it was the power ball number. That would be $4.00. Not even enough to buy a cappuccino at Starbucks.

The announcer said, “27.” She didn’t look at the ticket. It didn’t mean anything yet. Once she’d won $7.00 with three matching numbers and no power ball number.

Click.

The door knob turned and he came in. Walking pretty steadily.

“I’m going to take a shower then go to bed,” he said.

She glanced at the TV screen and saw the numbers 6 and 54. Four matching numbers. That was $100. She’d never won that much before. One more would be a million dollars even without the power ball.

She heard him start the shower.

No “sorry, I’m late.” Or “how was your day?”

A good thing he was taking a shower. Did he think she couldn’t smell the alcohol on him? And sex? Never mind the perfume. Perfume that probably cost enough to pay the damn gas bill so he could have a hot shower.

Click.

She turned on the light in the bedroom and took a blue velvet bag down from the top closet shelf. It was heavier than she remembered. She removed the Smith and Wesson Model 10 from its bag. It was worth four or five hundred dollars. The only thing she had worth anything. Her insurance. Not enough to pay the rent, but worth more than anything else she had.

Her father left it to her. Not a big gun, but big enough to do the job he’d always said.

She went back into the front room. The pistol grip fit her hand perfectly. She held it, cradled it against her bare arm like a baby, its metal silky smooth and cool.

This story was also awarded Honorable Mention at the 2015 Rose State Writing Short Course. Click here for the whole story.