Cowardice

Flash Fiction by Tom Miller

Finn wasn’t a coward, no, he was just a child. Thirteen, naive, impressionable. He thought he’d lost his innocence earlier that year when he drank his first beer and got his pecker touched for the first time. But, he actually lost it when he rifled through his sister, Brigid’s, diary when he was home alone one quiet afternoon. Curiosity got the best of him and he poured through her secrets, the voyeuristic thrill palpable on his fingertips. The thrill gave way to horror as he read, Darren Byrd raped me on February 15th. I am not angry or scared. I am numb. Warm tears streaking down his smooth face, he ripped the book in half and threw it into her closet. He ran to his room and wept, ashamed of his invasiveness, terrified of this knowledge. When his choking sobs subsided and his hands stopped shaking, he scowled at himself in the mirror. Stop being a bitch, he told himself. He wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. Darren Byrd was a senior. Although he was pushing three-hundred pounds, Darren was funny, well-liked and sold drugs at the high school. Finn often saw Darren smoking weed with his older brother, Nolan, at the park. Darren knew Finn and always nodded to him when Finn passed through town on his skateboard. Finn couldn’t believe that such a friendly guy could do something so heinous.

Raised on Marvel comics and violent films, Finn’s believed that crime ought to be punished. He was obsessed with violence even though he had never truly seen or perpetrated it. How would Frank Castle handle Byrd? What would a character in a Scorsese flick do? They’d kill the son of a bitch. Rage clouded his hazy, adolescent mind and he decided that Byrd would pay in blood. Finn’s dad kept a .38 inside the safe in his study and didn’t know that all three of his children knew the combination. Finn had never fired a gun, but grabbed the .38 anyway, thumbing the cold steel in his hands. Its weight frightened him, but his sense of duty far outweighed his trepidation.

It was mid-April and spring still had not come to Central New York. The wind came off the lake and chilled your bones, no matter how thick your coat was. Finn knew that Darren hung around the park on a nightly basis and waited for business. He stood in the cold, biding his time. The park was empty and Finn shook, not from the cold, but from fear. The gun felt heavier than the secret. Hours passed and Finn stared at the lake, small waves cresting beyond the dock nearby. Nighttime fell and Darren appeared, his pudgy face illuminated by a phone light. He stood there in the dark, unaware that Finn was closeby, and sparked a blunt. The backwood wafted into Finn’s nostrils as he removed the .38 from his waistband and approached Darren. Darren had no idea he was there until Finn cocked the hammer. He shined his cell phone light on Finn, but dropped it when he saw the .38.

“What the fuck?”

Finn said nothing, certain that Darren hadn’t seen his face. He stood there, frozen, his index finger paralyzed.

“Well?”

“I…I know what you did,” Finn said, his voice shaking.

“Oh, yeah?” Darren said, confident now that he realized it was just some scared punk in front of him. “What did I do?”

The gun shook in Finn’s hands. His knees wobbled and he wanted to say it, but he couldn’t. Darren stepped toward Finn, unafraid.

“C’mon, bitch. The fuck did I do, huh?”

Finn jammed the small barrel into Darren’s impossibly round midsection.

“You raped my sister.”

Finn felt Darren’s body relax from the end of the snub nose. Darren said nothing and Finn knew that he recognized him now. His hand shaking, he pressed the .38 into Darren’s belly with all his might and felt the bulbous flesh move, but his index finger would not budge. Tears streaked down Finn’s face and he turned around and bolted away down the lake path. He ran in the darkness through people’s lawns, jumping over fences and dodging lawn furniture. When he made it to the south side of town, he stopped and panted, still clutching the .38. A full moon peaked out, free from the clouds now, and illuminated the lake in front of him. A bitter wind cut across his naked face. He wound up and hurled the .38 out into the water. Even in the distance, he could see the ripples bathed in moonlight. He wiped his eyes and walked home.

Months went by and Finn said nothing. Brigid confronted him about her defaced diary, but he denied any wrongdoing. He wanted to tell Nolan what Darren had done, but he couldn’t muster up the courage. Darren hung around town as usual and nodded to Finn every time he skated by as if nothing had ever happened. Finn heard rumblings through the grapevine that Darren raped other girls, but most people shrugged it off. Everyone seemed to know about it, but no one did anything. It was an open secret.

Finn didn’t know what to do. He told himself not to think about it, but it weighed on his conscience everyday, every time he thought about or looked at Brigid. Every time she looked withdrawn or distracted, he felt as if he knew why. The secret ate away at him and his inability to act made him feel like a coward. It wasn’t like he could talk to anyone about it. So he didn’t.

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Bio: Tom Miller was born in Central New York and attended college in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Since 2020, he’s written, produced and directed six short films–one of which won an award in the Cayuga Film Festival–and written three feature screenplays that have placed in various contests. Although he’s primarily a screenwriter, he also writes short stories. He currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia.

Cover photo by the author.

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