The Sickness

The sickness, that’s all we told Billy.

He couldn’t believe that Grampy fit into such a little container and we couldn’t convince him Grampy wasn’t coming home.

“But Grampy lives at home. Where will he live?”

The two were inseparable from Billy’s birth. Half-day Kindergarten was traumatic. Grampy paced all morning waiting for Billy to get home.

Once we gave Grampy a T-shirt emblazoned “Grampy: the myth, the legend, the man.” He wore nothing else unless it was pried off him to wash. He looked so peaceful in the casket wearing that T-shirt, we cremated him in it. Damn coronavirus.

From Guest Contributor NT Franklin

NT Franklin has been published in Page and Spine, Fiction on the Web, 101 Words, Friday Flash Fiction, CafeLit, Madswirl, Postcard Shorts, 404 Words, Scarlet Leaf Review, Freedom Fiction, Burrst, Entropy, Alsina Publishing, Fifty-word stories, Dime Show Review, among others.

Kindergarten Physicist

Sir Isaac Newton had once again allowed his anger to get the better of him. For punching Lord Chesterfield in the stomach, he was sentenced to 9 months of forced servitude at the Trinity College Kindergarten of Cambridge.

As a man of science, Newton could think of nothing more unscientific then children, and life at the kindergarten proved unbearable. Most of his time was spent teaching the guttersnipes how to stack blocks in a geometrically pleasing manner, an activity which their infantile brains proved incapable of comprehending.

He would always refer to this period as his descent into the dark ages.