The Courage Of The Queen...A Short Story

 

The Weekly Wednesday Writing Prompt

I'm hoping to get this story entered on time. A few months ago I came across some websites where a challenge was given, namely, to write a short story (500 max) using a single photo and five randomly chosen words as inspiration. You too can join in the fun. Just go to this website: HERE. write your story and post it to the site. You've got one week to write and submit your story (a new challenge is posted each Wednesday). This week's picture is above, and the five words are: 

Tar

Lollipop

Courage

Figure

Parasite

My story for this week is called:

The Courage Of The Queen

 

Cassidy reluctantly took the keys and jammed them into the car’s ignition. Driving his sister’s sub compact was not the worst part of taking the car from her dorm room at NC State to his parent’s house an hour away, it was the bumper sticker that told anyone following that the driver of this particular sub compact felt an overwhelming urge to warn everyone “Don’t Mess With The Queen.” Funny, of all the things that occurred in the past 24 hours, the bumper sticker seemed to bug him the most.

            “How could Jenny do that?” Cassidy asked the cracked dashboard, a dashboard covered with smiley face and lollipop stickers, stickers that mocked him as he drove. “What was she thinking?” a question many in her family had asked since they first heard the news of her elopement the day before. “I mean, she barely knows this kid.”

            The summer sun warmed the road to the point where Cassidy could hear through the open windows the slapping sound of the car’s balding tires as they rolled over the heated tar. She should have at least gotten the a/c fixed before she decided to run off on a Caribbean Cruise with this Tom fellow, Cassidy thought as beads of sweat accumulated on his brow.

            And who is this Tom figure, anyway? The family tried desperately to find out more about him since receiving the cryptic e-mail the day before. From what they could gather from friends and Tom’s family (who was just as confused as they were…) Tom seemed like a decent enough person, a senior majoring in parasitology with only two classes until he graduated and could hopefully turn the study of a parasite into a money-making career. The strangest thing of all, Tom’s father had told him, is that eloping with a girl he’d only known for three months was something the Tom they knew would never do.

            And this worried Cassidy more than anything else.

            Still, Cassidy thought, it must have taken a lot of courage to just run off and get married on some island. He wondered if he would have the guts to pull a stunt like that. The thought filled the older and “wiser” sibling with melancholy as the sub compact continued toward the house where he and his sister grew up, to a home where nothing would ever be the same again…

  

Word Count: 402