Keep an Eye Out
That’s what the father said before he went for a nap, but it wasn’t clear who he was actually talking to as he climbed the stairs. Well, that was stupid of him wasn’t it—leaving a teenage boy, a cat, and a pile of freshly caught fish in the kitchen? And eggs, a bunch of eggs, perfect for a squinting teenage boy and his friends to throw at a school wall, a school with a principal who had just expelled the teenage boy for selling weed at lunch time. The fish, having no eyelids, had no choice, but they could see nothing because they were dead. It was the orange cat, eyes wide, who had the most to gain here, once the father was snoring and the boy had scrambled off with the eggs. He crept up and over the pile of fish, dug in his claws and teeth—sampled each one. They all tasted the same, so he chomped a hole into the centre of the largest, ran for the cat-flap, but he had never been a big thinker.
Louella Lester is a writer/photographer in Winnipeg, Canada, author of the CNF book Glass Bricks (At Bay Press 2021), contributing editor at New Flash Fiction Review, and is included in Best Microfiction 2024. FB: @louellalesterwriter IG: @louellalester