Django twirled a stylus through his fingers as the holographic sun dipped into the holographic sea. Under her long black lashes, Myrtle watched him. She could still see the baby he had been in his face. In silence mother and son watched the sunset from their porch.
“The HOA showed a real nice one tonight, don’t you think,” Myrtle said. Her voice was a caress.
Django gave a preteen grunt that could mean yes or no or go right to hell. He returned to his drawing and she to her knitting. Four years is a very long time and if she was struggling to understand why Hatchet left them to protect them from the people who couldn’t accept their family Myrtle could only imagine what her eleven year old was going through. Myrtle knew he was nervous, furious, excited. In the distant there was the hushed roar of an antique hover bike. Both of their heads snapped up at the unfamiliar yet familiar sound. She and Hatchet first bounded over their shared love of motorcycles. She loved the newest racers but Hatchet was into antiques. Myrtle remembered teasing him, an android who idealized Harleys. Their first kiss was over a rebuilt engine.
Their tidy subdivision hummed with family cruisers, school transports, and bicycles. Hatchet rode up towards them. Against her will, Myrtle’s heart leapt. She knit more rapidly her needles clicking. Hatchet dismounted his old Dean and stood at the end of their driveway. Django rose. The boy’s eyes flamed; his fists balled tight. Myrtle froze.
“Dad!”
In a snap, Django’s face crumbled into tears and he rang to his father arms outstretched. A faux breeze picked up ruffling the tails of Hatchet’s long coat as the violet sky faded into indigo. The two hugged and cried and hugged. Stuffing her half-finished blanket into her carpet bag, Myrtle swiped at her own eyes. She left them to the night, left them to untangle the past, left them to their next steps. She escaped to her home office. Pull it together, you are the Chief of Police on a third rate moon of a D list planet put one your big girl panties and work the case. Tapping her tablet, the official FlorCorp police file sprang to life. Extortion, corruption, robbery, murder, Myrtle threw herself into a world she could understand.
twisted short short fiction & poetry
circularstaircase 