The girl is seven. The boys are older, maybe nine. From the kitchen window, she watches them try to blow the lid off a garbage can with firecrackers.  They hoot and holler. Then they see a cat, and one of the boys grabs the cat and tells the others to run into the garage and get duct tape.  He has a master plan. The boys fetch what he requests, and then he tapes firecrackers to the cat’s tail. One boy looks sickened and like the girl watching from the window, says nothing. The ringleader lights the firecrackers, and the cat runs off screeching.

Years later, the ringleader will ask this girl, who had once lived in his neighborhood, if she’d like to watch the city firework display. He looks at her as if she’s crazy while she screams, “How would you like it if I’d duct tape a firecracker to your dick?”  Then she steps closer, and he wonders if she may actually have a firecracker.  “Years ago, I spent days looking for that cat. Some of the neighbors said boys will be boys when I told them I was looking for this cat.  When I finally found her hiding in a neighbor’s shed, I carried her home wrapped in my shirt. But not the vet. The vet was horrified when I told him what you did. That cat sleeps with me every night.” The boy, who is almost eighteen, able to join the military, to vote, to leave home, barely remembers that day in his driveway, and laughs it off, saying, “I guess that’s a no.”

About the Author:

Some of Diane Payne’s most recent publications include:  Cutleaf Journal, Mukoli, Miracle Monacle, Hairstreak Butterfly, Invisible City,  Best of Microfiction 2022, Another Chicago Magazine, Whale Road Review, Fourth River, Tiny Spoon, Bending Genres, Your Impossible Voice,  Book of Matches , Watershed Review, Superstition Review, Windmill Review, Qyarterly West,,Table Feast Literary Magazine Lunch Ticket, Miramichi Flash, Spry Split Lip Review, The Offing, Elk, and McNeese Review. Her chapbook “Things That Happen in the Rain” is available at Bottlecap Press.   More can be found here: dianepayne.wordpress.com