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from Flash Contest #44

Last Vacation

Dear Ela,

I know this is weird, me, I mean you from the future, writing to you. This is very important though. Vacation is very special to you, but I am begging that you spend less time re-reading your novels and watching the waves crash onto the shore endlessly at Cancun. Just forget trying to glimpse a moment where the whole ocean is still. It won’t happen.

You haven’t really spent much time with your family lately, just endless piles of homework and doodling on scraps of paper. All those times they tried to make you talk about your day at dinner, they were helping you open up.

I get it, your brother was—is—very annoying, but please stop calling him that name. And try to spend some more time with him. At least take him to a corner store for churros, which he will be crazy for a few days later. Or maybe to the putt putt place. He always wanted to go try even though you hated it. It’s not real golf. He’s into video games, right? What about the arcade room in the hotel? I guess that’s as close as it gets.

Two days before you received this letter, he brought home a trophy from a swimming competition. But you being you, you just had to knock it off the shelf, breaking it into eleven giant shards of glass. Because he was constantly bragging. That’s what you told yourself. Yes, he is extremely angry right now, but making up with him is very important.

And if you don’t even try? Just wait a little less than a month and you’ll feel like you’re floating in another dimension, waves of agony crashing into you that you can’t relieve. I still feel the same way, standing in my bedroom, face pressed against the window, as I stare at the waves.

Destiny cannot be changed. This is the last vacation you’ll spend with him, so laugh your head off at his lame jokes and watch SpongeBob SquarePants on the giant black television with him until you realize you never want to see a sponge again in your life.

Best wishes,
Ela


Stone Soup holds a flash contest during the first week of every month. The month’s first Weekly Creativity prompt provides the contest challenge. Submissions are due by midnight on Sunday of the same week. Up to five winners are chosen for publication on our blog. The winners, along with up to five honorable mentions, are announced in the following Saturday newsletter. Find all the details at stonesoup.com/post/stone-soup-monthly-flash-contest-winners-roll/.