Hello Readers, Writers, and Friends,

And welcome to another Flash Fiction Friday.

But first: an update.

I am having surgery (low-risk outpatient surgery, so nobody panic) the week of Thanksgiving. And I was planning on bringing you a special gratitude post and great flash fiction that week, but well, when one has been under the knife so to speak it kinda derails all other plans.

I will absolutely bring you my same dose of seat-of-my-pants writing for the next two weeks. But I am taking the week of Thanksgiving off. In all likelihood I will be asleep for most of that week and will only be tentatively sampling some mashed sweet potato and possibly a piece of pie.

You can’t have Thanksgiving without pie.

I’m actually really grateful that this is happening now, because it means, if all goes well, I will be facing the New Year with a substantially improved bill of health. I’m looking forward to it, and I’m so thankful that the technology and skill necessary to perform this surgery are available to me (at an exorbitant fee mind you). Modern science really is a testament to what humans can do when we let knowledge and action build upon each other over time.

But enough of me waxing philosophical!

Today’s prompts are: enormous stuffed animal, runner-up

No one thinks of themselves as violent. Maybe especially those that are particularly prone to it. We tell ourselves that we were provoked or that it was a special circumstance. What more special circumstance can you imagine than the fall fair?

It had all the blinking lights and fair food smells that draw a kid in. The ferris wheel went round and round. The tilt-a-whirl went round and round. The scent of caramel popcorn went round and round and round.

And then i saw it. Taller than me. three feet wing span. Green and Blue and stuffed to the gills. The silly way the felt red tongue stuck out just made it better somehow. And I wanted it. I had five tickets for games, and the ring toss where that prize hung waiting for someone with a good eye and a strong arm to come win it was only one ticket a play.

Which should have told me that this dragon had no chance of being won by anybody. It was the bait.

Headless of the futility of my quest I stepped up and handed my ticket over. Three rings, three towers of bottles. The first ring sailed over easy as you please. It gives you that tiny bit of confidence. That little hit of success. But the second one didn’t go as planned. Neither did the third. I was given a tiny little lollipop. I told myself it was just a practice round.

And so each ticket slipped out of my hand quick as can be, even though I finally managed to ring the second stack, and got a token for a caramel apple. But I didn’t want a caramel apple.

I decided that the dragon had to be mine. I wasn’t walking away defeated.

No, I walked around the back and snuck in. I crept to the place just around the flap from where extra bottles and rings and such were kept. With all the noise of the fair, all the shouts and jeers, the whir of the rides, and the sizzle of frying you couldn’t hear it. But there, right behind the third stack of bottles was a little fan, pointing upward to that no ring could settle over the top of that stack.

It was so obvious. It was such a cheat. It was the catalyst for what would become my first robbery. My first armed robbery.

I snatched one of those extra bottles behind the booth, crept up to the barker, and brained him with one good blow. The people playing the game almost didn’t notice, they were so focused on getting those rings where they wanted them to be. But they wouldn’t have my prize. My prize!

I grabbed the dragon, tearing the loop off the top of its head where it hung from its lofty place, and made my daring escape. I lost the carnies that eventually pursued me by ducking into the park. I hid that first treasure of mine in the attic’s crawl space. I would go up there and sit its soft, plushy embrace whenever life got tough, even after I was twice as big as it.

I’m pretty sure it’s still sitting there, in my mother’s attic. I do miss it here in cell block C.

Hope you enjoyed that. As always I’d love to see what you come up with in the comments. Share with your fellow Readers, Writers, and Friends.

See you all soon,

~Anika