This week’s challenge was to use one of ten titles suggested by flash fiction participants and chosen by Chuck.
Click here for the full challenge on terribleminds
Sincerely, Your Mortician
Title by AN
Story by Scott Mollon
He was there at the moment Daniel was born. Before the nurses finished clamping closed his umbilical cord and washing his mother’s fluids from his body, even before the boy’s mother, He was the first to lay his bone dry hands on Daniel. The first to bury his nose in the soft brown hair atop Daniel’s head and take a slow deep breathe in.
At age three, He hung over Daniel in a dead man float, as Daniel’s body betrayed him and sucked in lungfuls of chlorinated water at the bottom of his aunt’s backyard pool. He lay on his stomach in the puddles, chin resting on his crossed forearms, as the EMT breathed the water out of Daniel and the air back in.
Two summer’s later, Daniel surprised Him by taking his hand.
Let’s play ninjas, Daniel said.
It had rattled Him. He was sure this sort of thing was not supposed to happen. Daniel should not have been able to see Him. But it was also the greatest year and half He ever had.
