Flash (double-length) tale #1 - "Sucker"

Here's January's first flash tale, and it's a double-length story. I hope you like it, let me know if you do! :)

A little girl answers the door. Long, blond hair, eyes flecked with gold and brown. Robert’s heart falls at the sight of her. When was Haley planning on telling him that she had a kid?

“Hi,” says the girl, smiling up at Robert. She’s not shy, but she’s not jumping up and down either. A calm little girl in orange overalls and yellow top. She looks around four or five years old. Maybe she’s older. Robert has never been good with kids ages. Never had the slightest interest in being a father, a point he’s made crystal clear to both his wife and his girlfriend.

Robert glances at the bouquet of flowers in his hand. “I’m here to visit your mom.”

The girl responds with a confused look. She brushes hair back with delicate fingers. It’s only then that Robert notices the rainbow-colored sucker in the girl’s other hand. Great breakfast. Great parenting, Hayley.

Robert tries again. “I’m here to see your mommy.” Maybe the girl is younger than he thought.

The girl shakes her head. “No. No, you’re not.” Her diction is crisp.

Robert is now the one who looks puzzled. “Mommy…your mom…she’s not here?”

Oh, Haley. Oh, come on. Great, great parenting. He looks at the girl again, a spitting image of her mother. A child that Haley never told him about.

“It’s me,” says the little girl. “It’s Haley.”

Which is a silly thing to say. Despite her neutral expression, she must want to play a game, a make-believe stunt that only a small child would find engaging.

Robert, who has fabricated a dentist appointment for this, who left home this morning telling his wife that he’d be home for lunch, doesn’t have time for games.

“Look…” He turns his head, looks up and down the street, suddenly curious as to who might be noticing the conversation between the grown man and the child. The man in the business suit? That must be the little girl’s father. And the flowers? Sweet appreciation for Mommy.

Dammit, Haley.

“Robert,” says the girl, “It’s me.”

Robert shakes his head. Impossible. She knows his name, but it’s still impossible.

“Sweetheart, I- “

The girl holds up her sucker, like a cop stopping traffic, and she tells Robert something. About what happened between Robert and Haley two weeks ago, hidden away in a downtown hotel, making promises, and telling sweet lies. The details are both so grown-up and also so true that Robert comes close to falling backwards in shock.

He reaches for the doorframe, hangs on with desperate fingers. Marigolds and California poppies fall to the ground.

Haley tugs on Robert’s coat. “You should come inside.” She looks down at the bouquet and smiles thinly at the blooms. “How romantic.”

Robert retrieves the flowers and follows Haley across the threshold and into the kitchen. There is a table that Robert has enjoyed breakfast at before, drinking coffee, holding hands, and making more of those promises. Robert takes a seat and Hayley perches on a stool.

No breakfast today. Unless he snatches the girl’s sucker, still in its cellophane wrapper. But even a glimpse of the rainbow candy makes Robert’s teeth hurt. It must be full of sugar.

“I don’t understand,” he says numbly. He gestures across the table at Haley. “What happened?”

Haley brings her hands to her face, peers at her fingers. No color on her nails, no buff or polish. “Faith happened.” She folds her hands neatly and says, “Your wife turned me into a five-year-old.”

It’s impossible of course, but Robert knows that it’s true. The same look in Haley’s eyes, even if it comes with a button-nose and a dusting of freckles. His wife has turned his girlfriend into a child.

“How?” Robert asks, his voice a harsh whisper.

Haley shrugs. She lifts her hands long enough to waggle her fingers at Robert, as if casting a spell. “Could’ve been worse. It’s not like she put me in shackles and threw me in a dungeon.” She swings her legs, as if proving the point. She picks up the sucker and twirls the white stick between her fingers. The rainbow colors flicker as the candy spins, and for a moment Robert feels dizzy.

“Stop that, will you? This is serious.” He loosens his tie.

Haley replies sulkily, “It’s okay for you, you’re not the one having to go to Kindergarten.”  She picks at the sucker wrapper and then passes it to Robert. “Help,” she says simply.

Robert frowns. “It’s not even eight ‘o’ clock.”

“I’m hungry.”

“You can’t have candy for breakfast. Rot your teeth.”

Haley laughs. “That’s okay, I’ve got a whole new set waiting to come in. But seriously, the regression messed up my blood sugar…Faith said if I didn’t eat something sweet…well, she said you could have one cranky little girl on your hands.”

Robert pulls at the wrapping with his fingers, but without success.  Suddenly impatient, abruptly furious, he tears the wrapper with his teeth and then hands the sucker back to Haley.

She immediately takes a bite, showing off perfect baby teeth. She frowns, peering down at the sucker, cross-eyed with concentration.

“Ith too hahd,” she complains, her mouth full of sucker.

Robert groans. “Then lick it. That’s what you’re supposed to do anyway.”

Haley hesitates, looks straight at Robert with eyes that now seem blue in the kitchen light, and then nods. She holds the sucker primly, taking delicate licks, like a fastidious cat.

Kitten.

“If Faith could make you younger-” begins Robert.

“It’s so sweet!” Haley exclaims with evident delight. She offers it to Robert. “Wanna taste?”

He shakes his head. “No thank you. Now, if Faith can make you younger, she must be able to make you older as well. She can turn you back.” He slaps the table with his palm. “I’ll make her turn you back!”

Haley blinks in surprise, and for a moment she looks afraid.

“Sorry,” says Robert quickly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay,” Haley replies softly. She continues to lick the sucker and look of fright melts into a dreamy smile as she swallows. “So good.” Her expression softens further and then she giggles. “You can’t get mad at Mommy…”

“Excuse me?” Robert interrupts. “Who?”

Haley puts her free hand to her mouth and blushes, but her embarrassment is swiftly overtaken by more giggles. “I mean Faith, not Mommy!” She laughs so hard, sucker shaking in her hands, her face flushed with excitement, that Robert knows if anyone saw them, they wouldn’t be convinced that Haley was anything but an innocent little girl.

Robert makes a hushing motion with his hands. “Calm down, Haley. Please.”

The girl nods, pursing her lips, but her eyes are still filled with excitement. “You can’t make her mad,” she whispers. She looks to the hallway and stage-whispers, “If you make Mommy mad, she’ll turn you into a frog.”

“Faith,” Robert corrects.

Haley nods, bouncing lightly on her stool, and her swinging legs are back. “Faith.” She puts the sucker in her mouth for a moment, giving herself chipmunk cheeks, and sucks hard. Then, after she swallows, she sighs happily, her free hand starting to twirl her long, blond hair between her fingers.

“Haley,” says Robert. He doesn’t like the faraway look on her face. He really doesn’t like that one bit. He reaches for the sucker. “That’s enough sugar.”

There will be a meltdown. A tantrum for the ages.

Instead, Haley acquiesces immediately, and Robert is left holding the sucker’s white stick.

“Mommy…” Haley giggles again. “Faith says my punishment for trying to steal you is being little. And your punishment…” She grins. “Is being a daddy.”

Robert stares at the girl. “What?”

“It’s ob…ob-vee…it’s easy.” “I’m little and you’re my daddy, you have to take care of me and stuff.” She climbs down from her stool and comes around the table, and without waiting for an invitation, she climbs ono Robert’s lap. “You have to be my daddy.” She nods emphatically, case closed. “Unless you want to be a frog instead like Mommy says.” She wrinkles her nose. “But that would be icky.”

Robert exhales. “There’s no way…” He looks towards the hallway. “Where’s Faith? Is she in the house?”

Haley points at the flowers and produces a high-pitched squeal. “Look Daddy!”

Robert flinches. “What?”

“Flowers ‘re orange and yellow, so’s my dress,” Haley announces. She twists around on Robert’s lap and grins at him. “That means we match!”

“Great. That’s awesome.” Robert holds onto Haley’s narrow waist as she jiggles on his knee. “Is Faith in the house? Is she upstairs?”

“Huh?”

Robert looks into Haley’s gold, brown, blue eyes and sees nothing of the adult awareness she had demonstrated just seconds before. “Haley. Sweetie.” Robert looks at his ex-girlfriend imploringly. “Where’s Mommy?”

Haley’s face lights up, and Robert hears a familiar voice behind him.

“Really shouldn’t feed little girls suckers for breakfast.”

Robert turns in his chair to find his wife has entered the kitchen. And there’s something different about her. A sense of power, confidence. Because she has magic, and everyone in the kitchen knows it.

And Robert is right to be afraid.

Hayley grabs the bouquet and scrambles off Robert’s lap. “Look Mommy!” she says excitedly, “I match Daddy’s flowers!”

Faith smiles at the little girl. She takes the flowers and brings them to her face nose. “Mmm.” And then she tilts her head playfully at Hayley. “So did Daddy buy them for you or for Mommy?”

Before Hayley can ask, before Robert has a chance to lie, Faith says to her husband, “I wouldn’t lick that if I were you.”

Robert immediately lets the sucker fall onto the table and looks anxiously at his sticky fingers.

“Smart cookie,” says Faith. She kisses Haley on the cheek. “Time for school, and a certain little girl hasn’t brushed her teeth yet.”

Hayley trots out of the kitchen, and Robert listens to the thundering of little feet as the girl races upstairs to the bathroom.

Faith takes a seat at the table. “Hi, honey,” she says blandly. She looks him in the eye. “How was the dentist?”

Robert swallows. “Look…Faith…I know I made a mess of things. But we can work this out, we can fix it.”

His wife gives him a hard look. “I already fixed it, Robert.” She looks at the flowers and then back at Robert. “I was planning on dropping her off at social services, but I kinda get what you saw in her. She’s so pretty, and sweet as honey. I guess I’ll keep her.”

Robert hangs his head. “I don’t…I can’t be a father. Not to her. She and I…” He sighs. “I get that it’s over, message received. But this is crazy, I’m not her father.”

Faith nods. “Well, you have a choice.” She reaches over and lifts Robert’s chin so she can look him in the eye. “You don’t have to be Hayley’s daddy.”

“Oh, sure!” Robert pulls away, his chair squeaking on the tiled floor. “And get turned into a frog!”

Faith laughs. “Why would I…” And then she nods. “You shouldn’t believe everything Hayley tells you. She’s just a little girl, her head’s full of nonsense.”

They both turn their head at the sound of Hayley coming back downstairs.

“I diddit Mommy!” Hayley calls out. “I brushed my teeth!”

Faith calls back, “Good job. And is the towel on the hook or on the floor?”

The girl’s footsteps pause, and then there’s the sound of Hayley reversing course.

“If you don’t like plan A,” says Faith, taking her husband’s hand, “there’s always plan B.”

She leans over and whispers something in Robert’s ear.

His face pales. “Huh?”

Faith smiles. “Think about it.” She stands up. “I have to drop Hayley off at school, and then I’ll come back, and you can let me know what you’ve decided.” She walks away from the table, and then turns when she reaches the hallway. “Make sure you eat something, honey. You know how cranky you get when you miss meals.”

A few seconds later, after Hayley has kissed her father goodbye and Robert is left alone at the kitchen table, he sits in silence, looking down at his hands.

And weighing two extraordinary choices.

THE END?