Short Story: ‘Emma’

This is a short story I submitted in the ‘Furious Fiction’ at the Australian Writers Centre in August 2018.
The prompts for that month were:

The story had to be 500 words (or less)

The sentences “The door was locked” and “It felt familiar” and “She laughed” had to be included.

To find out more about Furious Fiction, go here:  https://www.writerscentre.com.au/furious-fiction/

It’s free, fast and fun.

Here’s my story.

EMMA

By Denise Newton

I didn’t know what to do. The door was locked. I rattled the handle, twisted it hard. Emma, behind me on the step, jostled my elbow. I turned to her, scowling.

“We can’t get in,” I muttered.

She laughed. “What’s it matter?” she called as she bounced back down the stairs, landing on the pavement with a “Ta da!”

Emma always found the laughter. It’s what most people love about my sister. She is slow, and a bit chubby, and her face has that flattened look. And she knows how to be happy.

“Emma, it’s not funny.” I tried to scold, and failed as usual. Emma never allows words to penetrate when she is in her happy place.

She said “Let’s go to the park!”
“We promised Dad we’d clean up this afternoon,” I reminded her.
“We can do that later!” She was off, running down the street towards the park; one of her favourite places.

Sometimes, Emma can be very tiring.

Mum’s house was too far to walk to, and she wouldn’t be back to pick us up for another two hours – which would’ve been plenty of time to clean up the mess in Dad’s kitchen that we – or really, Emma – had made yesterday. He’d been angry when he got home. I could understand why. It couldn’t have been great, getting home after work to find Emma, dusted head to foot with flour, looking like a walking snow cone, with egg shells, vanilla essence, mixing bowls and dirty spoons scattered all over the bench tops. The look on his face… poor Dad.

Mum had arrived then, and the tension between them was a razor blade, invisible but deadly. It felt familiar. I’d said, quickly “We’ll come tomorrow after school, Dad, we’ll clean it up, promise!”

And now, here we were: locked out.

I heard the low throb of Dad’s car and spun around, grabbing Emma’s elbow to steer her back to the house. She beamed at Dad and rushed to him, her little arms hugging his legs as he tried to get out of the driver’s seat.

“Hey, Daddy!” He put his hand out to smooth her hair, his eyes meeting mine above her head.
“Hey, baby,” he said softly. I could tell he had forgiven her. That felt familiar, too.