Flash fiction from my incomparable sister Laura!

They Used to Call Them Stars

By Laura J. Graham

 “Pinpoints of light against the dark,” said the old woman, combing her long silvery hair.

 And the little boy laughed as he set up his cans again for target practice with his sling shot.

 “Everybody knows that monsters come from the dark,” he said.  “There are lions, and man-eating scorpions, and even a woman with poisonous snakes for hair.”

 The old woman folded up her tattered blanket off the park bench she had been resting on.

 “But we used to go there,” she said. “Back when we could see.”

 “Weren’t you afraid?” the little boy asked.

 “Oh yes,” said the old woman. “We were terribly afraid. We were afraid of death, and cold, and explosions.  But there were people lined up to go, waiting their chance.”

 Then she put her blanket into her satchel and strolled off to look for supper.  Behind her she could hear the plink, plink plink as the boy aimed his pebbles at his row of tin cans.

 The next evening he was back.  “I talked to my teacher,” he told the old woman.  “He said we are much safer now.  We used to worry that bad people would be hiding behind corners so we lit up all the corners.  And then we worried things would come swooping in out of the sky at night so we lit up that too.  And now everybody sleeps much more soundly.”

 “They used to call them stars,” said the old woman and lay down on the park bench.

 Soon she fell asleep and the little boy sat in the grass for a long time and looked at the lamps getting brighter and brighter as the sun disappeared.  Then he took his sling shot out of his pocket and aimed at his very first street light.