Hat – A 100 Word Story

This was again part of the 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge. Voting’s back, so you can vote for it and listen (and read) the rest of the stories over at the 100 Word Stories site. If you just want to listen to mine alone, you can do so using the player below. (If the player’s borked – like in some feed readers – try this link. The link mentioned in the audio is to this page; scroll down to see the fiction works (they’re listed in chronological order).

My son puts on a newsboy cap, picks up a newspaper and his voice rings out: “Extra, extra, read all about it!”

I laugh, and he tosses the hat aside. He grabs a cop’s hat and waves a baton. A helmet, and he’s lowcrawling along the floor.

I see the fedora, but I’m not fast enough. Steel eyes gaze from under its brim.

“Couldn’t wait for the inheritance,” my father says through my son.

I stumble backward as my son, wearing my father’s hat and my father’s eyes, raises the knife.

“You never could wait,” he said.

“But I could.”