I’ve been busting out some writing exercises lately and decided to share the one from today. The ground rules for this one is pretty simple. I get three words at random and ten minutes to write.
Black, Watch, Kitten
“Fuck!” Robby tried like hell not to use that kind of language, especially when he was standing beneath his mom’s open kitchen window, but sometimes it just slipped out. Or raged its way out. Whatever.
“Robert Benson Write! You watch your language!” His mom banged on the window to give her words extra emphasis. Of course she was in the kitchen. If she’d been anywhere else in the house, the universe would have given him a pass on getting scolded. To date, that hadn’t happened. No use thinking it would happen today.
“Yes, ma’am.” He sucked the grease stained blood off his knuckle. There was no point trying to explain to his mom that he’d just wracked his hand against the alternator on the old Charger he and his dad were fixing up. Correction. The old Charger he was fixing up. His dad hadn’t so much as looked at it since last July. That’s when he’d left them for some trampy stripper kitten he’d met at Juno’s on Highway Fifteen. He’d gotten tired of coming home to his wife and family and decided to stay with her full time. He was a total asshole, but he was also Robby’s dad. He missed him, sure, but he was pretty certain he’d punch him in the throat if he ever bothered to show up here again. He’d take the lecture from his mom about how violence never solved anything. Robby knew two things for sure. First, his dad really needed to be smacked hard. Two, his mom would never do it even though she had every right to.
Robby went back to work on the car. It was the one good thing his dad left behind. His mom got a mortgage payment she couldn’t afford, and a whole mountain of other bills. Robby got a sexy, black ’62 Charger. So what if the thing didn’t run, and Robby didn’t have money for parts to make that happen. It was still a fucking cool car.