By Darren on June 13th, 2010
That Golden Day
If you’re a regular reader of Geekcentricity, you know that every now and then I post some of the strange search terms that people have used to arrive here. Nobody gets stranger search terms than Chuck Wendig over at Terrible Minds. Well, nobody that isn’t running a fetish porn site. A really bizarre fetish porn site. His “Search Term Bingo” always makes me laugh my ass off, which is what inspired me to share some of my strange search terms.
Now, one of the more ridiculous search terms that some poor soul probably typed into the computer in his basement apartment in his mom’s house, only to arrive at Chuck’s blog, has inspired a bit of a writing contest. The 996 word piece of flash fiction that follows is my entry into that contest. I was going to wait until later in the week to post it. That was my strategy, damn it. But I lost my cool. I decided to get it up here (stop thinking that way) before somebody else pulled my story out of the ether and wrote it themselves (which happens). Here is my entry. I hope you like it. If you don’t, blame Chuck.
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That Golden Day
by Darren G. Miller
September 3rd. Jaydon’s 5th birthday fell on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend last year, so we decided to throw a huge combined family reunion/birthday party hybrid thing. It was awesome. There were people there that I barely knew. Family that had never seen Jay before. Brenda’s dad kept hauling Jay up onto his lap. Every time he got up there, Jay would yank on his beard like he was a department store Santa and it was going to come off or something. He took it well, always giving a deep belly laugh and saying, “My beard” in a high pitched voice like Curly from the Three Stooges. There’s a picture in my wallet of Jay up on his grandfather’s lap, happy in a way that only little boys can be, Spider-Man t-shirt already dirty from a busy day of being a boy.
At one point, my aunt Bernice leaned down to tell Jay what a handsome boy he was and Jaydon, my boy, looked up at her and said, “So fat,” before scurrying away, giggling. Kids say the damnedest things. Bernice wasn’t quite as amused as everyone else was. She stewed over by the food tables with a couple of the other old aunts and uncles for most of the day. Truth is, she really was fat. Bernice passed away six months later when her heart gave out. I got some leave to come back to the funeral and couldn’t help thinking of Jay’s words when I looked at her in the coffin. I had to stifle a quiet chuckle as I gazed down at her in final repose. I’m surely going to hell for that.
The day of that party sure was beautiful, though. We’d even gotten one of those outdoor laser tag companies to come set up a course in the field beside the house. I remember thinking that Bren was going to have to hire someone to cut all that grass after I deployed. Most of the kids played laser tag all afternoon. Jay put on the smallest vest they had and wore it pretty much all day after that. It was really too big for him and the damn thing kept sliding off to one side, one of Spider-Man’s eyes peeking out from beneath. But he sure loved running around out there with all the bigger kids, pointing and pulling the trigger. Shouting, “You dead. I kill you with my laser!” Seemed like every few minutes, or at least every time I sat down with a cold beer, Jay would run over with his vest all crooked, shouting for me to come play laser tag with him. “Daddy, come on! I wanna do laser!” Every time, I left my beer, put on a stupid vest, grabbed a plastic gun and joined the game. I wasted a lot of beer that day. What can I say? I love my son.
It was a golden day all around. A picture book day. It was one of those days that gets you through the harder ones.
Today was one of the harder days. We were pulling presence patrol duty in some province I couldn’t pronounce even if I’d cared enough to try. Some locals motioned for us to drive over, waving their arms and calling out in whatever fucking language they spoke. That was when the world came apart. Must’ve been a roadside bomb. One of those fucking IED’s. I think it was wired to the old sand-covered car that was next to us. That car looked like it hadn’t moved in years until it moved in every direction at once in a burst of flame and hot metal. My ears were still ringing from the explosion. My vision was shit. The whole world had gone fuzzy and red. One of the locals who’d been calling us over was screaming and grabbing at his beard, which was on fire, along with whatever he was wearing and most of his lower body. I couldn’t hear what he was screaming.
I was having trouble moving. Fuck. Stop denying it. I was having trouble breathing. A piece of something, looked like a piece of the armor sheeting that was supposed to protect us from shit like this, was stuck into the ground through my left shoulder. There was blood everywhere and a smell somewhere south of roasting meat. I raised my right arm and wiped my face. I had a beard of sand and shattered glass and whatever the hell else was stuck to my face. As I tried to wipe it off I thought of my son pulling on his grandpa’s beard that golden day. “My beard…” I wondered if that’s what the burning guy was screaming as he grabbed at his flaming chin.
Burning guy crumpled into the dust just as a large local woman, a relative perhaps, arrived on the scene and started beating at him half-heartedly with a rug. As I watched her futile efforts, eyes failing, I thought, “So Fat!” I chuckled, or tried to chuckle, through the blood in my throat. Definitely going to hell for that. Or maybe I was already there.
“Daddy, come on!”
I heard the words clearly despite the ringing in my head that was still the only other thing I’d heard since the explosion. It took most of my strength to turn my head and look to my right. Towards my son’s voice. A few feet away, the sand of this desert hellhole ended and turned into the lush green grass of the field beside our house. My son was standing there, with his arm outstretched, waiting to take my hand. He was wearing that too big laser tag vest that was still sliding off to one side, with Spider-Man peeking out from underneath, just like that day last fall. His birthday. He looked at me with his big, beautiful eyes and said, “I wanna do laser!”
I set down my beer and took his hand.
Special thanks to @cavsgt (Nick "Snapper" Dewsnap) for serving as my "military advisor" as always.
Nick has been gaming with me for years now. At the beginning of my last campaign, he brought an assortment of firearms to a session, so that everyone was familiar with the weaponry their characters would be using. He even owns a "Thunder 5." Not a guy you wanna mess with. Glad he's on my side.
Crying prior to finishing First Coffee sucks, man.
Nice job.
Darren. Remind me, sometime, to bring my external hard drive hat I have over 17gigs of photo's on from Durkha Durkha land. I have some stuff on there that I couldn't put into my facebook album's. That is, if you want to see what the aftermath of an IED or a suicide bomber looks like.
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
@ Julie & Maggie – Thank you! I consider those high compliments (even if you weren't when writing them). You have both written great entries as well.
@Julie – Hope your coffee didn't get too watered down. Or salty.
@Snapper – Thanks again for the advice. I do want to see those pictures. I'm surprised I haven't seen them yet.
Darren I started to read this the other day when good ol' Chuck tweeted about more entries. Don't know why I got distracted, but that was a good heartfelt story. Luckily I've not lost anyone to the wars. I hope all the lost have as pleasant last thoughts.
Good job, and super props for getting the bonus half into the story. Very clever.
@Ron – I haven't lost anyone either, but I know a number of people who have gone to our lovely war zones as representatives of the good ol' USA. I wasn't really even trying to make a statement here. I just read Chuck's contest the morning he posted it and then jumped in the shower, where I had this stunning vision of a dying man in a military uniform having a vision of a little kid in a laser tag vest as he died. Up to that point, I didn't think I was going to write anything.
I'm glad you noticed my little
"My beard!"
"Come…"
"So fat!"
trick there.
Thanks for reading! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
[...] for my story in Chuck Wendig’s “I Wanna Do Laser” flash fiction contest. My piece finished second in the voting against some tough competition. What follows is my entry for [...]