(Page 1 of 2) Torrential by Sean Regan
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SUMMARY: For the flash fiction exercise, "Torrential"Once again, Sophie the Scottish terrier had taken too much of a liking to the threadbare but cozy recliner that was preferred by the man who considered himself the head of the household. His shouts of consternation rang through the house, and Janie, who had been playing with her little brother in their room upstairs when the commotion started, left their game to rescue her dog.
The insults became more distinct and more creative as Janie descended into the living room, where she saw her father leaning above the tight space formed by a corner of the room and the 70-year-old piano that had belonged to her mother's mother. The poor dog had squeezed into the space, and Janie knelt and reached into the corner to comfort the terrier, even as her father's anger increased.
Janie's mother, a Texan with opinions, appeared in the living room and immediately let her husband know what she thought about his treatment of the dog, and then she began to bring up other things he could do that would make him a better man. Janie's father returned fire, and within thirty seconds both of her parents had forgotten the dog in their haste to argue about other matters. Their boundaries were few and flexible, and knowing they could spend a long while in this way, Janie reached decisively into the tight corner, took hold of Sophie, and carried the dog with her as she walked between her oblivious parents out of the living room, through the kitchen, and outside into the late afternoon heat of June. She shut the door behind her; the argument inside became muted enough.
Out on the back patio, Janie whispered to Sophie as she held the dog close, and she could feel the creature's warmth and the wire-like fur that would make her itch until she washed her skin with soap. She reminded the terrier that it must not sit in her father's chair or rip the pile of newspapers into shreds as it had done two weeks before. Sophie wriggled close in Janie's embrace and unsettled the girl's glasses, so Janie put the dog down and set them right.
Another furious cloud seemed to be forming in the sky to the southwest, out past the Millbach land. The thunderhead was stacked miles high, but these were a once a week occasion in this place, in this season, and Janie was born and lived among such storms. She saw two of the Millbach children, the younger ones, come racing around the corner of their house; they were giddy and giggling and soon followed by their father, who was bent low to the ground with a two-horned plastic hat on his head. A Viking hat, she decided, and she guessed that he was pretending to be a chasing bull. At other times, Janie may have run across the quarter mile between the homes to play with them, but not this day. She may have told herself that, at twelve, she was too old to be chased by an eccentric man pretending to be a bull, or she may have professed that the thunderstorm was too imminent to run to the neighbor's place, but such reasons were only half-truths that could not fully explain her passivity.
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