“Todd, why is there a pair of boots out front?” Kim stood at the window looking at what her husband placed outside.
“They were Erica’s boots. There should be a public reminder.” The thirty-year-old electrician stared wistfully into the fireplace as logs were peacefully consumed.
“Oh.” She sat on the sofa next to Todd. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright to say she committed suicide.” He took her hand.
“You want to go through with the lawsuit, right?”
“I know it won’t make any difference to my sister, but a person who cyberbullied her shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”
I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields photo writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.
Yesterday, the rather colorful and expressive New York State Senator from Brooklyn, Kevin S. Parker, responded to a criticism from Republican Candice Giove that he had improperly used his parking placard to block a bike lane on a busy street by tweeting “Kill Yourself!” It’s all over the news including The New York Times and USA Today. After receiving a great deal of public criticism from fellow Senators, journalists, and the general public, he apologized, and then kept attacking Ms. Giove.
No, I seriously doubt Ms. Giove will commit suicide as a result of Senator Parker’s insensitive and impulsive tweet, but it did put me to mind of cyberbullying which occasionally does result in children and adults committing suicide. In my story, Todd put his sister’s hiking boots on a low wall in front of his house as a memorial. As a society, we need to do better.
To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.