Theodore Jerome Cohen is the Readers’ Choice in this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge. The winning entry is decided by the popular vote and rewarded with a special feature here today. (In the case of a tie, the writer who submitted an entry first is the winner per our rules.)
Without further ado, here’s the winning story:
Out There
by Theodore Jerome Cohen
It was 3:00 a.m. Not the best time to come stumbling into their apartment, especially after a night of poker, cigars, and beer with his old Iraqi War buddies. Elise’s patience was already wearing thin, but the ghosts from his past haunted him still, and nothing he did could vanquish them.
The car’s radio had been set to Elise’s favorite rock and roll station, but he, wanting a change, punched the Seek button until it settled on one playing Country Western music. Just like old times, he thought, as memories of Camp Udairi, Kuwait, flooded into his mind. The music reminded him of William “Bat” Masterson, his old Army buddy from Memphis, and the great music Masterson used to play on his CD player before the invasion of Iraq . . . songs by Alan Jackson, Lee Ann Womack and Willie Nelson, Faith Hill, Dolly Parton, and others. He and Bat used to sit and listen to Masterson’s CDs for hours at a time after a full day of flying Black Hawks out there on practice missions over the Kuwaiti desert.
Masterson always was the first one in line for mail call, but the men never knew whether it was because of the sexy, perfumed love letters he got from Sherry or the Country Western CDs she included with every letter.
Bat never made it back from Iraq, he remembered. I wonder whatever happened to Sherry and their two boys.
Congratulations, Ted. So excited for your latest flash fiction victory.