Wait for wintertime, a Flesh Trap flash fiction
Summer mornings reminded Casey of grass between his teeth and licking dirt from his lips. The dry heat that made the clothes stick to his back was unwelcomed each year, seeking refuge at his opened refrigerator door, a bottle of water pressed to his forehead. Plastic sweating on his brow, he sighed, closed his eyes.
August in the city still tasted like salt and the days spent in the vacant lot on the edge of the housing development where he grew up. No matter how much space he put between himself and Mooreland Street, the summers spent there still hid in streams of sunlight coming between half-opened blinds, making the roof of his mouth dry. Tongue pasty, throat raw, heart beating in his wrists and temple where he could listen for it. The grass was as tall as he was back then, beige from the mid-July drought and crunchy beneath his feet. He and Mariska used to go the lot after school, backpacks forgotten in a sunken patch of earth and under a rotted wooden plank.
The lot was all that remained of a house that had burned down before Casey was born, just a foundation and a bathtub left behind in the jungle of grass. It was their place, the one spot in the neighborhood none of the other children dared to venture and none of the parents remembered to check. Each summer they hid from the sun under the brush and plucked at the flowered heads of weeds and didn't say a word of home or David or Alyona. Never Mom or Dad, just Them and They and Us, forever separated by the invisible lines that divided the Way-Kovol home. They were safe there in the lot, blades of grass stuck between their teeth and rolled into knots around their fingers. She always promised they would be together forever, no matter what their parents did or didn't do. He always held his breath and nodded under his shaggy hair, and said yes. Of course. Forever.
She was eight, ten, twelve and fourteen. He was six, eight, ten and twelve. Then David Way died and they never returned to Mooreland Street again.
Casey closed the refrigerator door, slid off his shirt and closed the blinds. The sunshine edging across the carpet died in a flick of the plastic cord and he went back to the bed where Joel slept. If Joel woke, Casey said nothing of summer or home and breathed against Joel's collarbone instead.
