Tags
Central America, cultural awareness, drug cartels, drug crime, drug smuggle, drug war, fiction, flash fiction, Honduras, poverty, sea stories, short shorts, short story, writing
“Tonight is a night for hunting turtle eggs,“ he heard his great-grandmother say. She never really brought any turtle eggs home but she always said that, on full moon nights. Clear as a silver day.
His waverunner zoomed effortlessly over the waveless sea. Left of him the black outline of the shore. A thick row of palms, all lined up like fluffy cotton candy. To his right waves crashing on the coral reef making a steady, foamy white line that always murmured, even on silent nights like this. Green cotton, he thought, white foam, and white snow all around him. His cargo in neat, dense, square packets stashed away in the watertight storages in front of him, underneath him, between his legs. The squares tight and heavy like his stomach felt now.
No one else dared be out working on this silvery night. Music would be nice. It would stop him from straining to hear the helicopter POC-POC-POC, the coast guard’s BRR-BRRRR. It would also shut up his own voice. Silence the chatter about his brothers. The jokester one, always grinning, up to no good. The fighter one, his troubles at school. The nerdy one, what’s the newest comic book please? The skinny one, clothes slipping off his bony shoulders. The silly one, the silent one. This one was a sister, her voice drowned out by her brothers’ shouting. Each needed something only he could give. So they were all One, really. One doctor’s appointment, One new pair of shoes. One university, maybe, one day.
But now is not day, it’s night. The low thrumming of the waves became the droning POC-POC-POC and BRR-BRRRR, and his smile hides like a baby turtle in its soft egg.
This piece appeared for the first time on Zero Flash, Creative Writing in small numbers, at:
https://zeroflash.org/2018/05/06/mays-zeroflash-competition-entries/
©Kenna Lee Edler