A Change of Topic

      Two Vic Neptune short stories written in 1996, published her for the first time.

                                               

                                             Interrupted While Reading The Return of the King

 by Vic Neptune

     I hate these hot days when they want me to learn to swim.  I don't want to swim.  I hate water when it gets in my nose and in my ears.  I get so scared and I sink and I'm going to die on vacation.  

     Some of the kids in class would think that's funny.  Go on vacation and die.  Being dead's a vacation I guess.

     I'm laying on the big bed in Mom and Dad's room.  I'm looking at the blanket on the bed up close, little white bumps swirling around in a pattern I can't see now.  If standing, looking down at the bed, I can see it.

     I hear them outside splashing in the lake.  

     My brother says, Let's get Victor out here.

     Mom says, He should be outside on a day like today.

     Dad says, He's got to learn to swim.  It might save his life someday.  Will, go inside and tell him to get his suit on.

     I stop the siege of Gondor with a bookmark. 

     I press my hands into the white blanket.  I know I'm going to die today.

   

                                                                      Apprentice Terrorist

    by 

  Vic Neptune

     

     We saw it develop on a damp late winter day right after school let out.  Dark gray sky over the playground.  Kids talking and yelling, soft pop of a football hitting bare wet hands.

     A tall fifth grader, nameless in my memory, angry bird face, was having a bad day.

     Clutched in her big right hand, a red yarn winter hat with a tail five or six feet long, blooming with a fat red pompon she dragged through mud puddles and then slush.  Circular motion with her arm catapulted stinging cold and dirty projectiles at nearby boys and girls.  The hat's tail whistled as it described its arc.  Shouting boys, screaming and squealing girls, road-dirt and mud-splattered by a crazy pissed-off giant girl.

     The air by three o'clock felt heavy and dark, car tires rolling on wet pavement, otherwise a still dim day waiting for nightfall.

     We fast-walked or ran to our homes, anxious to put distance between ourselves and her hat.

     I last saw her tromping east on a filthy slushy Rankin Avenue sidewalk.  Her whip trailed in thirty-five degree gutter water.  She spattered two girls ahead, they didn't see her coming.  She shouted at her victims while they hurried away, but slowly, hindered by slush.

     Cold, I had to get home, remove myself from danger.  

     I heard the girls scream again.  The monster was out of my view.

Vic Neptune