Sarasota, Florida
Congratulations, Madeline!
Madeline’s Bio:
Madeline Mora-Summonte’s work has appeared in over 20 publications, including Highlights for Children, Storyhouse, and Every Day Fiction. She’s written poetry, personal essays and book reviews, but her first love is fiction in all its forms, from flash to novels. Every week, she attends a writing workshop where the talent and the creativity of the group continues to amaze her. The workshop, led by mystery author Blaize Clement, is where the seeds of this story took root. For the fifth consecutive year, Madeline is participating in November’s National Novel Writing Month. A four time winner, her goal this year is an extremely rough draft of a YA horror novel.
She lives with her husband/best friend in beautiful Sarasota where they don’t spend nearly enough time walking on the beach and collecting seashells as they’d like.
You can visit her website at www.MadelineMora-Summonte.com
Doing Time
The store is deserted, the aisles empty. My feet cramp from standing, my cheeks ache from smiling. I sink onto the stool behind the counter. Everything sags—my shoulders, my breasts, my butt over the edges of the seat.
I close my eyes. When was it that I became a weary, middle-aged woman with two ex-husbands and no children? When was it that this—this job, my tiny apartment, Bingo on Tuesday nights—became my life? I shift on the stool, determined to think positive, to visualize myself on a glorious tropical beach. I take deep breaths, but I don’t smell sea air or suntan lotion. All I inhale is dust and cardboard and left-behind body odor.
The bell above the door jingles, the cheery sound mocking. I put the smile back on like I would a sweater, an accessory. I open my eyes.
A man wearing a pig face mask looms over the counter. He points a gun at my chest. I gasp, but it’s not a sound born of fear; it is one born of recognition. My heart remembers this man in ways my mind forgets.
I had been young and foolish and fallen so hard in love it was as if I’d shattered every bone and sprained every muscle in my body. Sammy was too old, too stupid and too cocky for his own good. But I was a child-woman, and the very height of him, the reach of his arms, the span of his palms, both comforted and aroused me. I wanted nothing more than to please him. I did things I wasn’t proud of just because he asked. But when he wanted me to rob a store with him, I refused. It was the first time, and the last time, I said no. We fought, and he left me. I was a wrung-out woman, my choice a cold companion. When I had heard Sammy went to prison, I had wept, my sorrow steeped in the rich, fertile blackness of loss.
Now here he is, back in his old, rotten life. And where am I? A corner office with an assistant? A house in the suburbs with a husband and children? No. I am right here, as if I’ve been waiting for him this whole time. Is that possible? My hand creeps to my heart.
I stand, moving with a gentleness, a grace, I forget I possess. I press his shaking arm down so the gun slips onto the counter between us. I slide the pig mask over the top of his head, the hair now whisper thin. His pale blue eyes, brimming with sadness, watch my face. He opens his mouth but I lean over and kiss him, as much to keep him quiet as to give myself back a little of what I had lost.
***