bank

MLMM Tale Weaver — A Figure of Speech

Fandango17 Comments

I was in my bedroom, but I heard my mother and father arguing. It was about money, as usual. My father was laid off shortly after the pandemic began. My mother also lost her job as a waitress when the restaurant she worked at was shuttered. They were discussing how they were going to make ends meet, which I think means having enough money to pay for what we need, like food and clothes and stuff.

Then I heard my mother say something that really upset me. She said to my father, “Maybe we should sell the house.” I have never lived anywhere but in this house. The thought of selling it and moving somewhere else shook me up.

But then my father said something that really shocked me. He told my mother that our house was underwater. I looked around, half expecting to see a rising level of water flooding my bedroom. But everything was dry. I got off my bed and walked into the kitchen. My mother was seated at the kitchen table crying and my father was standing over her trying to console her.

“Are we going to have to move!” I asked. “I don’t want to move. What can we do to stop the flooding?”

My father gave me a quizzical look. “What are you talking about, Billy?” he asked.

With both of them looking at me with what was either a look of love or pity, I said to my mother, “I heard Dad tell you that our house is underwater, but it seems dry to me.”

My mother smiled and beckoned me to come over to her. She lifted me up and placed me on her lap. Then my father said, “Billy, underwater is just a figure of speech. It means that we owe more money to the bank than what our house is worth, so if we tried to sell it, we’d have to give the bank more than we’d get from selling the house. So don’t worry, son, we’re not going to sell the house or move.”

“That’s good,” I said. “And don’t worry about me, Mom and Dad. I don’t need any presents for my birthday or for Christmas. I’ve got everything I want and need just being here in this house with the two of you.”

Written for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Tale Weaver prompt, where we are asked to compose a tail that involves “underwater.”

Friday Fictioneers — The Caboose

Fandango23 Comments

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA“Get ready, Sundance,” Butch said. “The train’s approaching.”

Sundance put down his binoculars and said, “I see it, but it’s just a bunch of freight cars filled with coal. You said the mining company’s payroll would be on that train.”

“They probably have it in a safe in the caboose,” Butch said.

Sundance picked up his binoculars. “I don’t see a caboose on that train.”

“Gotta be,” Butch said. “All trains have cabooses.”

“Maybe in the States,” Sundance said, “But we’re in goddam Bolivia.”

“Okay, mount up,” Butch said. “There’s a small bank in town we can hit this afternoon.”

(100 words)

Written for this weeks Friday Fictioneers prompt from Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. Photo credit: Jennifer Pendergast

The Big Idea

Fandango21 Comments

AE9425C1-CB10-494D-AA51-9AF373D770A9This was not how Henry wanted his life to go. He didn’t want to sit around playing bingo, waiting for his life to slowly drift off into the setting sun. He needed a big idea that would enable him to escape the humdrum life of retirement, to add a some excitement and even a little drama to the few remaining years he had left.

Henry believed he had come up with such an idea and when he revealed it to Harry, his best friend, Harry enthusiastically embraced Henry’s idea. “I wager that we can actually pull it off,” he told Henry.

The two men lived in a senior home in a relatively small town in Iowa. There was one bank in town and Henry had seen enough movies about amateur bank heists to enable him to hatch a scheme to rob that bank and for the two of them to abscond with a few bags full of money.

“Easy peasy,” Henry told Harry. “I’ll slip Frank, the security guard at the bank, who’s probably closer to death than we are, a C-note to go out back and take a cigarette break. Then we’ll hand Mildred, the teller, a note, hand her two large cloth bags, and tell her to fill them up with cash.”

“But she’ll recognize us,” Harry said. “She’ll rat us out to the cops.”

“Who cares?” Henry said. “We’ll take my son’s car and hightail it out of town. We’ll take the money, head to Chicago, go to the train station, and grab a train to the coast with our bounty. Boom, the good life!”

As it turned out, the heist went exactly according to Henry’s plan. The two old men stole the money, drove to Chicago, got a cheap hotel room near the train station, and planned to get up early to take the first train headed west. But when Henry woke up the next morning, Harry was gone, and so was the money. Then Henry found the note from Harry.

“Loved your big idea and great plan, Henry,” the note said, “but you failed to take into account how selfish I am. The money will last me twice as long if I take it all for myself. Besides, when you get nailed for the bank robbery and thrown in the clink, you’ll get a bed and three squares a day. You won’t need any money. All the best, Harry.”

Written for Paula Light’s Thursday Inspiration post, where the theme is “gone” using the image above from Enrique Lopez Garre. Also for these daily prompts: Ragtag Daily Prompt (drift), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (humdrum), The Daily Spur (drama), Word of the Day Challenge (wager), and Your Daily Word Prompt (abscond).