WritersWeekly (online magazine)

Fall 2020 24-Hour Short Story Contest

Prompt: She squinted at the dark yellow leaves blowing in through the broken window, scattering to the corners of the room. She’d never had any friends and she had her translucent white skin and pink eyes to thank for that Never attending school didn’t help her social status, either. Yet on this night she found herself huddled on the freezing floor of an abandoned hunting shack, surrounded by girls she’d passed near the woods. She startled when one of them leaned forward and spat, “Truth or Dare?!”

Hint: the story must touch on this prompt in some way to qualify although you may change details, but it must be obvious to us that the story was written specifically for this assigned topic. Must not exceed 875 words

How I Lost My Helicopter Dad

I have always been different, understatement.  My albinism- pink eyes, white hair and super pale skin- merely physical differences.  Home schooling contributed to my oddball status.  But the thing that made me the freakiest kid ever was my father: the penultimate helicopter parent.  He is why I ended up practically frozen in a hunting shack in northern WI last year, why I am fatherless right now and why I will likely never forgive myself.

My dad wanted me to be able to take care of myself. He vacillated between over protecting (not letting me be mainstreamed into normal school classes) and insisting on my learning independence (signing me up for hunter training classes)  so when I turned 18, he must have thought Why not make her even more different? Enroll her in an NRA rifle training class for women?  Once he decided something like that, you couldn’t change his NRA addled mind.  And my mother was no help; she’s big on guns and even has a concealed carry permit. So even though I like animals and I don’t like venison, I wound up on a deer hunting debacle in northern WI with my father.

Snow is good for tracking but there was no snow that November day, just ominous clouds and bitter winds. We carried on, but my heart was not in it, just seemed like cold, hard work.

Dad and I separated with a rendezvous point established.  This was part of my independence training, I insisted. And I hoped he wouldn’t follow me. Except I wasn’t dressed adequately for wind chills below freezing-Mother warned me about that- and I didn’t want to bag a deer anyway.  So when I saw a little hunter’s cabin off the trail I was on, I ducked in to try to warm up. Four other girls were already in there. Their loaded rifles set on safety leaned against a wall.  I added mine to the stack. These girls all knew each other, all belonged to a rifle club.  I was, as usual in my life, the outsider. No one said anything about my appearance; I was covered up.

But one of the girls stared at me when I took off my sunglasses and the hood of my coat. The big reveal. I’d seen that look before. Hostility. Why does difference generate hostility?  How could someone get angry over eye or hair or skin color? So many times my dad explained it: fear out of ignorance. That was not helping me right now.  I just wanted to get it over with and proclaim Yes, I have albinism and my eyes are pink, so what! And that’s what I did.

The staring girl, I should know her name but I think I have repressed it, cast her eyes down just then, and the other three girls got all friendly and introduced themselves. I began to believe I might become a true member of a sort of hunting pack. Maybe I would come out of this with new girlfriends, I even hoped.

But that staring one wanted a game to pass the time. I was enjoying camaraderie without the structure of a game, but no one objected to Truth or Dare, so we gathered in a circle on the frozen floor.  I wished I’d worn a skimobile outfit instead of levis. My merino wool socks were no help for a frozen butt.

The question the staring one asked me was Do your cuffs match your collar? Two of the other girls snickered and the third girl, the nicest one, said Oh, leave her alone.

I did not know what the question meant, but I knew it was some kind of ridicule of me. I wanted it to just go away, so I passed, and the good feelings from a few minutes ago dissipated.

One window, broken, was our source of light, also the source of cold wind coming in. Looking toward the window now, I was wishing I had stayed out there, that I had stayed with my father.

When my turn came around, I dared the staring one to point her rifle at me. I don’t know why I did that.  Pretty stupid, actually. Maybe I wanted to prove I wasn’t afraid of her. Maybe I wanted to call her bluff.  But she walked to the stack of rifles and snatched up her weapon.  The other girls groaned. Then she pointed it at my face! Everyone gasped.  I stared at her and imagined my pink eyes boring holes into her ignorant brain. Then she took the safety off! Nothing in my hunter training course had prepared me for that. Nothing moved and no one breathed.

Then something at the window rattled, and I turned away from the barrel of her gun to see the barrel of another gun. It was pointed at the staring one. She shifted her aim in turn. I shouted Oh no but it was too late. 

He missed, but she didn’t.

 My father, my helicopter father.

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Writers Weekly online magazine

Winter of 2020 24-hour writing contest

Prompt: Everybody else was driving south. Miles and miles of thousands of vehicles crawling, bumper to bumper, with many pulled over to the side. She grieved for the freezing people, but she could not stop to help. She was the only person headed north on the freeway. Her chest tightened as she glanced at the small box she clenched in her hand. Miles and miles of empty lanes yet the snow kept getting heavier. Even with her snow tires, she didn’t know if she’d make it in time for…

925 words max

                                    Lydia’s Road Trip

She knows her son would say, “Don’t come. It’s way too dangerous.”  But Lydia also knows he needs his medicine. He’s an adult; he’s 60, an adult many times over.  But he’s been buffeted about by life, divorced with two adult children who don’t have much to do with him. He came out as gay at age 50, lost his job, many friends, his self-confidence.  But she can help him.  She can bring him what he needs.

She’s headed north now on highway 51 in Wisconsin in early November.  There is no one else she has seen traveling north but bumper-to-bumper traffic driving south. That seems odd, but Lydia is grateful that traffic headed in her direction is practically nonexistent. The why is not her concern.  At her advanced age, she has learned what to worry about and what not to worry about.

 She doesn’t think 55 is speeding, but a car with flashing lights is trailing her. In her rearview mirror, the image of a cowboy startles her. She gasps a little for air as she sees him approach her closely behind. “A cowboy in Wisconsin?” she thinks out loud. But then her head clears and she realizes a state trooper in a wide brimmed hat is pursuing her. She turns on her right blinker and slows on the shoulder of the icy road. The patrolman exits his car, approaches, and knocks on Lydia’s window.

“I didn’t think I was speeding,” she squeaks as the window comes down and cold air blasts in.

“You weren’t, but you were weaving on the road.  I need to see your driver’s license.”

He takes her card and returns to his squad.  Lydia has been clutching a little box in her right hand, her left hand grasping the wheel. Now she pushes the box into her coat pocket.  She feels her heart thump and recalls her doctor telling her something about A and Fib, some medical condition.  She’s not sure.

When the trooper returns he comments, “Ninety-eight and still driving.  Good for you. And where are you headed?”

The trooper asks why she doesn’t call her son and explain current traveling challenges, the unexplained major power grid failure, snow coming from the north followed by an unseasonably early polar vortex, that people are evacuating to the south toward heat, no telling when electricity will be restored. She says she can’t remember his phone number; then she remembers that he doesn’t answer his phone anyway.  Then she says she doesn’t have a phone.

 He offers his own phone.  Lydia’s lower lip quivers.  She has no idea what to do with a smart phone. He asks what the son’s name is.  She says “Harry.”

“Just Harry?”

“No, ‘Handsome Harry.’”  She is not joking. 

The trooper studies her sweet, ancient face. He wants to help but she is adamant, anxious and confused, too. Her hand trembles when she claims her license. He again advises her to take the next exit and cautions that there is so little northbound traffic and so much southbound congestion that authorities are considering shutting down north bound and converting all traffic to southbound until the problems, the evacuation, the weather and the grid, are resolved. He tells her there are a few places that still have self-generated power, a hospital, etc.  He could escort her to some such place where she would at least be safe for the time being.

But she insists Harry is depending on her, she knows the way, has driven it many times. And she’ll take her chances because Harry needs his medicine. 

After a polite goodbye, she pulls away from the side of the road and hears the reassuring crunch of snow under her car.  She has new snow tires and doesn’t need to be afraid, she thinks. Instead she reminisces about Harry’s cancer and how the medicine helped him.  How he loves living “up north,” practically off the grid in a wooded area north of Rhinelander.  How she wished he weren’t so far away, that he were still married with someone taking care of him. But just remembering her many visits in the past and possibilities of many more in the future calms her, and even though she can feel her car planing over patches of black ice, she is emboldened with the knowledge that she will soon be with Harry.

The creek near Coon Street, Kern Street School and other familiar Rhinelander landmarks come into view and then, finally, the unmarked road to Harry’s cabin.  The driveway has been plowed.  “Harry must be home!” she thinks. She touches the box tucked into her coat pocket and imagines Harry’s delight when she arrives.  Blackout or no blackout, there is smoke coming from the chimney of Harry’s cabin. That means heat and that Harry is there.

But it’s not Harry who bounces out the front door kicking away snow to break a path and greet Lydia.  It’s a familiar man about Harry’s age but Lydia can’t quite place his name. Then she flashes back; this young man bought the cabin from Harry years ago.

Lydia calls, “Is he here?  Is he okay?”

In a rather practiced fashion because he knows in her grief that Lydia cannot bear the truth, he answers, “It’s the same. He’s the same.”

Lydia produces, as she has many times, the box from her pocket. “I brought his medicine.”

“You always do, Lydia. Come on in the house and we’ll share a joint.”