Sunshine

[A/N: Hey, so...I wrote this up in a rush, but I think it sounded interesting and, as for flash fiction, I think I did fairly. Tell me what you think, if you're so kind. (Derived slightly from a sentence long Writing Forward prompt--"Sonny jumped up against the chain link fence, wagging his tail furiously"--which sent my brain to this.)]

                                                             

SUNSHINE

Sonny, tail wagging furiously despite his age, jumped up against the rusty chain link fence. The old Labrador mix didn’t have gray around his muzzle, his honey-colored fur and pink nose displaying no signs of age, and his light brown eyes seemed as intelligent as ever, even if the name Sonny had worn off.

Louie sat on the dead grass and dirt in the Jacobson's’ yard, watching their dog’s frantic attempts to get at him as he ate on the green grapes he’d carried around in a now-slimy Zip-Lock bag. He reached through the links and stroked the side of the dog’s face with his finger tips as he chewed and thought back on their lives.

He could remember being four or so, toddling over to the more-youthful form of Sonny next door and nearly squealing in excitement over the new dog next door, ignoring how his father talked to the older couple and teenage daughter, Mindy, who had moved in and how his mother laughed at his exuberance. He smiled fondly at the memory even though it was bittersweet by now.

It was amazing to remember the days before he grew older, really, if one could consider him old. The Jacobson’s teenage daughter babysat him only once--long enough for the kitchen to catch fire, for example. He thought of the daughter growing up and becoming wild and going to college to the constant fear of her parents who were always over at Louie’s family’s house; his family getting a mutt puppy, a sweet agouti thing that had the appearance of a mix between a rabbit and a collie that died from being run over by the Jacobson’s daughter; his family adopting Michael, two months older, when Louie was six--Michael flaxen-haired and blue-eyed and almost pretty, only for his mother to fall pregnant and have Louie’s sister, Bethany, almost ten months later; his grandmother dying; his mother growing sick, lung cancer (her father was a smoker), but beating it down unto remission.

Getting the news today it was back. Not worse, barely there, but there.

Some days Louie felt like any teenager. That the sky had clouded over with gray and black and purple and green clouds, steely and mighty and flashing with lightning and rolling with thunder, and hail pounded down as a tornado whirled by, watched from the corner of one’s eye. Watched as one laid in their bed, bundled in covers and wishing the madness would stop in one way or another.

Louie flicked a grape at Sonny, who snuffled around in the grass to find it.

More than one way to skin a cat, Louie thought.

Then he came out and saw Sonny, saw the Jacobson’s still-standing house despite their daughter’s wanton, youthful insanity, the husband’s bad back, and the woman who became barren far too young. He saw himself in perhaps forty years. It was scary, sometimes. But it reminded him the storm never went away, but eventually one realied how to put up with it and perhaps kept a garden like Mr. Jacobson or was a troop leader or whatnot for the Girl Scouts like Mrs. Jacobson. Before then, one had to face the abyss yawning at them, their realizations of lack of grandeur and their own mortality, and eventually maybe, say in a few years, you settled and ended up like Mindy, with a partner, a pair of cats, and a career as the best artist on the eastern seaboard.

Childhood. Adulthood. Wisdom. Everyone lied, really. Told him he wouldn’t change.

Louie knew he would, eventually. Once he hit the next step. Moving closer and closer and closer to the peak of something he wasn’t quite sure people knew they got sometimes. Not perfection--no one got perfection here--but close enough. He was always surprised when they didn’t accept it as theirs and made a fuss of it.

For now, he recognized he was sweaty and terrified but tried to think of the day he could be peaceful, or, in the least, as oblivious as Sonny, who still hadn’t found the grape but searched with joy and energy Louie had forgotten could exist.

Eventually.

In the least, he hoped he could respect it when he got there--the knowledge or the oblivion.