Gravity, by La Onza
Gravity
350 words, for the "Daddy Issues" challenge.
Eden, Mr. Bennet, PG-13
He had the gravity of a father.
She knew the feel of that pull; it echoed in her earliest memories, when her own father still came home at night and all the energies of the house, in which she and her stepmother had spun aimlessly around each other all day, would shift and coalesce around him. Though he was not much like the fathers on TV, still, he had an aura of latent power. Even when he sat slumped in his chair with a bag of chips and a can of beer, he seemed real and solid and important. She liked to sit quietly near him, watching him, even when he caught her staring and said,
“You look like a goddamn mongoloid.”
He, on the other hand, was a lot like the fathers on television. He wore white shirts and aftershave. When he wanted to get down to business, he’d slap his hands together and say, “All right, then!”
When she stopped to calculate, she realized he must have been a teenager in the seventies, but it was impossible for her to imagine him as a young man of that decade, living his life to a soundtrack of navel-gazing California rock. Or disco.
She could imagine dancing with him to the music of earlier generations, the wistful romantic ballads that had papered over the pain and fear and rage of the World Wars and the Great Depression. His hand clasping her fingers would be warm, not sweaty. It guided her. His hand at her waist would be firm, not grabby. It anchored her. Maybe he would smile in his slightly goofy way.
In the space of a few years, she had known a freedom more absolute than most people would ever experience, and yet here she was, daydreaming of a man who knew how to lead, even though she knew that this dream was false.
Or, rather, that it wasn’t for her.
350 words, for the "Daddy Issues" challenge.
Eden, Mr. Bennet, PG-13
He had the gravity of a father.
She knew the feel of that pull; it echoed in her earliest memories, when her own father still came home at night and all the energies of the house, in which she and her stepmother had spun aimlessly around each other all day, would shift and coalesce around him. Though he was not much like the fathers on TV, still, he had an aura of latent power. Even when he sat slumped in his chair with a bag of chips and a can of beer, he seemed real and solid and important. She liked to sit quietly near him, watching him, even when he caught her staring and said,
“You look like a goddamn mongoloid.”
He, on the other hand, was a lot like the fathers on television. He wore white shirts and aftershave. When he wanted to get down to business, he’d slap his hands together and say, “All right, then!”
When she stopped to calculate, she realized he must have been a teenager in the seventies, but it was impossible for her to imagine him as a young man of that decade, living his life to a soundtrack of navel-gazing California rock. Or disco.
She could imagine dancing with him to the music of earlier generations, the wistful romantic ballads that had papered over the pain and fear and rage of the World Wars and the Great Depression. His hand clasping her fingers would be warm, not sweaty. It guided her. His hand at her waist would be firm, not grabby. It anchored her. Maybe he would smile in his slightly goofy way.
In the space of a few years, she had known a freedom more absolute than most people would ever experience, and yet here she was, daydreaming of a man who knew how to lead, even though she knew that this dream was false.
Or, rather, that it wasn’t for her.