The Station

This was going to be my entry into the weekly Micro Bookends flash fiction contest wherein they supply the first (WILD) and last (CHILD) words, respectively, of your story and you provide the in-between of no more than 110 words in response to this photo by Dan Markeye:

But then I realized my story doesn’t really fit the photo prompt side of it, so I’m just gonna post it here. It’s what I was feeling thinking about “wild” and “child,” so. Here it is:

Wild Twinkies, man. Untamed gluttony.

Kenny was blasting me about them.

“Dude, I want that cream-filling. Let’s just goooo,” he’d say, holding out the o until he coughed like an idiot.

I ain’t gonna lie, it didn’t take too much convincing. The gas station was a mile from our corner block. Cream-filling awaited.

We were in and out of the station in minutes. Nickels for Twinkies. I was unwrapping mine when the echoes of red and blue stabbed my corneas.

Kenny dropped his Twinkie, his feet stamping out the cream-filling.

Before I could whiff it, a bullet whizzed through the aroma.

I ran, too, in the shadow of a child.