The fluorescent bulb over the hallway flickers as Geoff drags himself from the sofa to the kitchen. An empty whiskey bottle teeters on the edge of the counter.
Outside, rain taps insistently against the windowpane.
He remembers the boy’s laughter; then glass, metal, a scream muffled by his own twisting panic. The boy went down in a flash of red. His tiny body splayed across the asphalt, as still as a broken toy. He was just a kid. Ten? Eleven? He was wearing one of those little backpacks. Red. With a cartoon on it. And his shoe – it came off.
Back in the living room, Geoff slides down the wall until his knees burn, arms flung wide, a marionette cut loose, blinking in disbelief.
Geoff struggles to reach his phone. No calls. No messages. He’s too scared to call the police.
His reflection in the hallway mirror is a stranger: sunken eyes, unshaven stubble, a man half-buried by fear. The ceiling fan whirrs overhead.
Every thought twists into questions he can’t answer—why did he drink, why did he drive, why didn’t he stop?
He listens for the phone, imagining the voice at the other end. He rehearses what he’ll say when the police catch up with him: ‘I’m sorry.’ But sorry feels too small, too empty to fill the space he tore open.
The clock chimes in the next room: seven slow beats. A siren sounds outside; Geoff shrinks into himself. There’s no one to save him from this.
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 