Sweet Victory
An exactly 100-word microfiction piece
“Whoever brings me a lily pad ‘fore my tea is done wins a quarter.”
Paw slapped a coin on the arm of his old rocking chair and took a long, slow swig, ice cubes clinking.
We lined up on the porch edge to race to the swamp where gators dozed and mosquitoes hovered. Our muscles coiled for the contest, tongues already tasting the coke floats we’d buy afterwards.
“Three, two,” Paw rocked back and, crack. There he sat on his bottom in a heap of sticks, drenched in sticky, sweet tea.
Paw’s knee-slapping cackle was sweeter than any coke float.
I wrote this a couple years ago for NYC Midnight’s 100-Word Microfiction Challenge. It’s inspired by a story I heard about my prankster grandfather, Edward Arlon Hand, who lived in Natchitoches, Louisiana, on Sibley Lake (bless his soul).
The most famous microfiction is Ernest Hemingway’s six-word story:
For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.
So much delivered in that single sentence.