Sunday Photo Fiction is a weekly challenge presented by Susan Spaulding, who has taken over this great weekly prompt from my old friend Al Forbes.
And she provides this week’s photo, which made me think of a character introduced by JS Brand in The Open Road, a Finish the Story challenge I recently contributed to.
The idea here is to write a short story (200 word max) inspired by what you see in the picture (below).
Click on this link to enter your tale, and see what others have written.
© Susan Spaulding
Click here to hear the author read the tale:
Flat Tyre
Zip’s humour is getting blacker by the minute.
Only a few years ago he thought he was the happiest guy alive.
He was married to his high school sweetheart, the prettiest girl in the state by a country mile.
He got the job of his dreams with the highway patrol, riding a Harley.
Back then he was a sunny-faced optimist, thinking his life was perfect.
Then he discovered that new rules for policing meant he had to go soft on this riff-raff that was ruining his country.
Long-haired hippy wasters, blacks, Mexicans, heavens knows what else, and he has to be polite to them!
They all deserve to be beaten up, or drafted, or both.
And that idle lump of lard that his wife has become.
She got that way having babies, girl babies, no use to a man like him.
Where’s the son he wants, a boy to teach how to play football, to fish and, most importantly, to shoot.
But what’s this ahead?
In the middle of nowhere.
A woman in a dress, all fancied up.
With a flat.
Zip smiles.
It seems like, after all, there is a god.
And he has delivered unto Zip.