This week’s prompt for Red Writing Hood is based on dramatic entrance, courtesy of  Webook.

Write a short story based on this prompt:

An art opening at a lavish downtown gallery. A car crashes through the plate glass window. The driver’s door opens, and an eight-year-old girl steps out.

Here is my attempt.

Abandoned

The luminescent orbs of street lamps, multi-colored flashing storefront signs, throngs of people all flying by at an ungodly pace. Blurred through thick teardrops. Pelting my chest. My lap. My hatred melting my heart, consuming every cell, and there were a lot of cells. Mrs. Oberdick told me so. She was smart. She was nice. She wasn’t my mother. I wished she could be.

My mother always too busy, painting came first.

“You’ll understand one day. When you’re old and all you have to show for yourself is an empty house and no one left to take care of. Feeling lost and not knowing who you are or what you have even become. That won’t happen to me. I need this.  I need to feel alive again. Not chained into a monotonous, thankless job. You will be a mother one day. You will understand.”

I would never be her. I would be a good mom. I would want to be with my kids. I would cherish every second spent with them. I would love them. I would choose them.

There it was, a block away. The fruits of my mother’s labor, brightly lit, displayed for the city to see. The men in their tuxedos and the women in their long formal dresses, eating those little shrimps on toast, sipping from full champagne glasses. Laughter. Mother soaking up all the attention, in love, and not with me.

Hands gripping the steering wheel, my concentration wavering. My chest, it was going to burst, so heavy and tight, just waiting to explode. Foot pushed upon the pedal, faster, harder. Mrs. Oberdick’s smiling face. Her loving grasp and it hurt, the tears cascading, a river running over my cheeks.

Headlights gleaming back at me. Glass imploding. People running. Canvases ripped from invisible wire. Destroyed. The center brick wall crumpling the front end of the onyx Mercedes, snapping my head forward into a cloud of white, then back into the tan leather seat. Hearing nothing, then shouting, her voice the loudest, louder than the ethereal screaming that was coming from my very soul.

“I hate you,” the mantra escaping my bleeding mouth, on endless repeat as I opened the door and climbed out of the wreckage.

“Zoe Grace! What have you done,” my mother’s voice an octave that didn’t exist, not in this world.

“I hate you!” A baby tooth, spit to the floor.

Maybe a gun, pointed at her chest, her anger subsiding to fear as I pulled the trigger.

“Zoe, put that down! What are you doing?” her hands trembling as she reached for me, willing me to come to my senses.

Maybe not…..

I watched as we passed the gallery. There were paintings that hung on invisible wire from the ceiling. The men in their tuxedos and the women in their long formal dresses, eating those little shrimps on toast, sipping from full champagne glasses. I caught a glimpse of my mother, laughter dancing on her lips.

A single tear trickled from my right eye, brushed away quickly, the evidence drying on the back of my hand.

“Mrs. Oberdick, can we get some ice cream tonight?”

“Anything for you Zoe Grace! Perfect attendance and straight A’s for the whole third grade year! That’s something to celebrate!” the warmth of her smile filling me up with love.

She wasn’t my mother.

I wished she could be.

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