Micro Fiction

Here is a sample of a micro fic I wrote for my MAF: Short Story class. It's semi-autobiographical, semi-fictional.

Votives

My little sister and I were allotted to my father twice a month after the divorce. “Every other weekend,” my father explained, pouring scotch into a smoky tumbler. I tripped after him, puppyish, eyes on the glittering bit of summer-colored alcohol in his hand. The gold ring he wore over the white furrow where the wedding band used to be contained a perfect tiger’s eye. It winked amber at me.

Papa let us stay up until midnight at his house, his contingency-plan furniture too small in the big rooms. By seven-thirty he was asleep next to Karin, who wadded herself against one shoulder of the couch. A second tumbler lounged in his long fingers, the first forgotten in the laundry room at half six. I plucked the glass out of his hand and set it in front of the fire with its twin. They glowed like the votives at Christmas Mass.

Later, when I was seventeen, the scotch glasses were seven, a votive procession through the house. My father’s voice now lounged and leaned like the glasses he forgot, all over the room. I cut my visits short three months shy of my eighteenth birthday.

Four years later, my estranged father’s voice clotted my answering machine one summer night: “Amy, I’m tired of fuckin’ around with ya. Give me a call!” His voice was grating, in a face-down on the floorboards sort of way. I pushed delete and made myself iced tea.