What follows is a piece inspired by the prompt over at Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner. The key elements were the photo below, the opening sentence/phrase and no more than 200 words.
Hunted – 199 words
“You lookin’ at me?”
Adrian tried not to bite her lip because she knew it annoyed Johnny. “Well, I was thinking—”
“You ain’t allowed to think, woman—’less it’s about gettin’ me somethin’ to eat.”
“My ma wants—”
“Didn’t you hear me? I said get me some food, and stop lookin’ at me like that.”
Adrian stepped past the man she’d lived with too long to call her boyfriend yet not legally her husband. “I can microwave some of venison from dinner last night, if you want.” She pulled the plate from the refrigerator.
“You lazy slob!” Johnny slapped the bottom edge of the plate, flipping it against Adrian’s chest. “I work all day, and you can’t even make me dinner when I get home?”
Adrian tensed the muscles in her face. Tears made him angrier. She stared at the mount of Johnny’s trophy buck on the living room wall. She’d hated that thing when he brought it home the week before. Its eyes always judged her, almost like Johnny himself was there. The only good thing about that deer was the gun Johnny’d bought for hunting—the rifle that now lay waiting on Adrian’s side of the bed.
Wise person having the gun on her side of the bed, if I was her I wouldn’t even be there being spoken to like that, who’s the next head to go on a trophy?
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I had a similar thought about his head going on the wall next! Thanks for the visit!
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I think he’s going to push her hard enough she’s gonna use that gun!
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Now, let’s just hope she has some idea how to use it! I like that in flash fiction I don’t have to explain the details.
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I know – we leave it up to the reader’s imagination. 🙂
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I think she’ll know how to use it. And she will. Eventually.
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I regularly seem to put my characters in depressing circumstances, but I like to think they make good choices after the story ends. Thanks for the visit!
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I think that there may be another trophy on the wall very shortly!
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