Means to an End (2nd Place)

Alex slid open his window and climbed onto the fire escape. The cool air greeted him like a long lost friend. Out here he could think. Inside the apartment all he knew was pain. The long nights of screaming from his mother’s room as Mark forced himself on her.

This night was no different. Mark’s fists found his ribs again. He could still feel the final blow land, and taste the blood in his mouth. At least this time he didn’t kick him while he writhed on the floor. Instead, he threw his mother against the wall and blackened her eye.

He lifted her crumpled body off the ground and put her in a choke hold . Alex watched as his mother’s face turned blue and she lost consciousness. He knew better than to cry. Mark would curse him as being a “sissy boy” and punch him.

His mother roused from her comatose state only to be dragged into the bedroom by Mark. The screams came next. Alex would usually lay in his bed until dawn – waiting.

Mark kept his snub-nosed .38 in a drawer in the kitchen. So, Alex crept to the sink, put on his mother’s dish washing gloves, and loaded the gun. He put on a black hoody and listened for Mark’s snoring, then stole his cell phone.

He slipped down the fire escape, and dropped to the street below. Walking to the nearest alley, he found a bum laying in a drunken stupor.

“I’m sorry,” He whispered and pulled the trigger. He lay the cell phone next to the body in the pool of blood, then planted the gun beneath the seat in Mark’s pickup truck.

He hoped it was the greatest gift he could give his mother. If only he could erase the bum’s face from his mind…


299 Words

Flash Story Must Contain: Escape, Dawn, Gift