Flash Fiction by Roberto Sanchez
South Central.
On the block, the seasons pass —
hot summers,
snowless Christmases,
New Year’s promises that sound the same every year.
Days melt into one another.
A puff of this cigarette.
The story?
A father of two.
They lived on one of the endless rows of blocks in South Central.
A music producer — nights filled with beats and smoke.
Husband to a woman who was the Jekyll and Hyde of the block.
Sweet in one moment, crack queen the next.
The kids begged neighbors for food.
Burned breakfast trying to survive.
She beat them for it.
The father kept his track of seasonal presence —
more gone than here.
The kids grew up anyway.
The daughter left for Atlanta.
The son hustled — film sets by day, Planet Fitness by night.
Saturday morning, word came down the block like smoke filling lungs:
The son never came home.
Car parked 24 hours. Silent.
Some said suicide. Some said murder.
No one knew.
The father rented a theater.
On the screen, his son’s face flickered — friends, family, laughter.
The father’s eyes wet with pain, regret.
He saw what his boy had become:
a good young man. Respectful. Loving.
At the funeral,
the mother arrived in a wheelchair,
voice broken from years of smoke.
The sister wept without end.
The father stood silent.
Was he a bad father? Maybe.
Maybe he worked too hard.
Maybe he stayed gone too long.
But the block doesn’t ask.
The block remembers.
Text © Roberto Sanchez
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