Day 19 of Nancy Stohlman's "30 Days, 30 Stories" flash fiction writing challenge and the prompt is "my father."
My father waits at the curb, leaning against his ’56 Hudson, a Lucky Strike burning down to his calloused fingertips. Despite my mother’s protest, I wear my best dotted Swiss dress, my petticoat starched and stiff against my bare legs.
He reaches inside the car, pounds twice on the horn.
New black patent Mary Janes pinch my feet as I rush from the window to the front door, down the three steps from the porch and out to the sidewalk. He tosses his cigarette to the ground and picks me up, his face like sandpaper against my own.
“Well, aren’t you Miss Fancy Shmancy” he says.
I smell the whiskey on his breath, though it is barely noon, and I know we are not going to the promised zoo.
