(Page 1 of 2) The Past Makes the Future by Jim WashburnSUMMARY: February flash fiction contest, theme is 'Trans' "You have the nerve to come back here after what you've done?"
"You're my father. I grew up here. This place will always feel like my true home." The speaker paused for a breath.
"I hoped to be welcome, at least accepted. I ‘m willing to settle for just being tolerated. Please Dad! I need some help."
Two people stood face to face in a modest, middle class living room. The walls were painted drab beige, furniture old and well used, the ubiquitous television in the corner showing its usual sports but currently drowned out by the shouting. The old dog had long since disappeared upstairs to avoid the bickering humans.
"What's wrong, your oddball friends don't want you around now?" the red faced man asked in a biting tone.
"Nobody has a spare room where I could recover quietly and get acclimated. I'm not supposed to be left alone for a while they said." The other replied in a quieter, pleading voice.
"If your mother was alive this would kill her."
"If Mom was alive she would beg us to stop fighting and talk together. That's what she always did."
"Talk! Talk about what? What can talking possibly do now?" The middle aged man's voice began to rise. The vein in his forehead was throbbing again.
"Stop us from yelling at each other?"
The father sat down in the recliner and turned his attention to the baseball game on television. An excited voice was announcing meaningless statistics and trying to make them, and him, sound important. He was rewarded with the mute button. The young person went to the loveseat and sat gingerly on the edge of the cushions, not relaxing in the slightest.
"Doesn't my happiness matter to you?"
"Doesn't mine?" The man in the recliner asked rhetorically. A silence spread throughout the room pairing well with the gloom that infused it.
"All the sacrifices I made for you. All the money I spent. We went to the World Series when you were ten, remember? I sat through your football games when the weather was terrible. I went to all your games, no matter what and never complaining. I was proud even though you were never very good." His voice grew lower as the apparently pleasant memories flowed from him.
"Dad, you made me join the football team, and the basketball team and the other sports. You never asked me if I wanted to." Now the younger one's voice began to rise also.
"I hated all of those sports, every one. My teammates were miserable, mean idiots who needed help spelling one syllable words, and they didn't like me either. It was all for you because Mom asked me to go along with it. She begged me to pretend that I liked playing for your sake."
"I don't believe you. She would have told me about that, I know it."
"Fine, it does not matter if you believe or not, it's still true. She did everything to try to help us bond more, to stop our head butting and probably give her some peace and quiet."
Again the silence spread between them, but nothing more. The stairs creaked as the old Labrador came down to the much quieter room.
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