Fast Fiction Challenge: Whatever She Wanted
Title: Whatever She Wanted
Word: refuse
Challenger: Anonymous (yeah, really!)
Length: 200 words exactly There were, he knew, few things in life as wonderful as glorious sunshine, your girl at your side, and the pleasure of doing something you were good at.
With a groan, he wondered why the hell none of the above applied on this lousy day.
The weather was overcast, she sat at the side of the river, and in thirty minutes, he’d grown to hate rowing. He hadn’t rowed since college, and he’d been lousy at it way back then. So why had he accepted the challenge to row up the river and back?
He knew the answer: he’d never been able to refuse her anything.
He felt something pull deep in his back as the blade of the oar bit deep and the moment it carved into the water, he knew the angle was wrong; he’d ‘caught a crab’ but he didn’t even have time to realise how embarrassing it looked before he heard the flowery curse from his rigger as the boat flipped and they followed the oar into the river.
And as he surfaced, he heard her laughing at him.
Sometimes, he realised with another groan, being a dad wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
© Lee Barnett, 2006
Word: refuse
Challenger: Anonymous (yeah, really!)
Length: 200 words exactly There were, he knew, few things in life as wonderful as glorious sunshine, your girl at your side, and the pleasure of doing something you were good at.
With a groan, he wondered why the hell none of the above applied on this lousy day.
The weather was overcast, she sat at the side of the river, and in thirty minutes, he’d grown to hate rowing. He hadn’t rowed since college, and he’d been lousy at it way back then. So why had he accepted the challenge to row up the river and back?
He knew the answer: he’d never been able to refuse her anything.
He felt something pull deep in his back as the blade of the oar bit deep and the moment it carved into the water, he knew the angle was wrong; he’d ‘caught a crab’ but he didn’t even have time to realise how embarrassing it looked before he heard the flowery curse from his rigger as the boat flipped and they followed the oar into the river.
And as he surfaced, he heard her laughing at him.
Sometimes, he realised with another groan, being a dad wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
© Lee Barnett, 2006