Fiery Christmas

Merry Christmas! This month, my daughter Libby wrote a Flash Fiction piece. It is her first try at writing fiction this way. She worked hard on it and endured her mother’s edits. I hope you enjoy it. For more Holiday flash fiction, check out Splickety magazine’s most recent issue.

As my gaze fell upon my seat at the dinner table, my joy for Christmas fell like the shepherds in the field.  “I can’t believe you’re making me sit between the crazies.”  I faced my mother, flipping my hand at the chair.

She didn’t even bother arguing, we both knew she agreed.  My mother’s sisters, Kelly-Anne and Barbara-Jean, were crazier than sprayed roaches.  It’s a wonder my logical, mild-mannered mother is related to them.  I mean, Kelly-Anne thinks she’s Scarlett O-Hara and Barbara-Jean’s still livin’ in the fifties!  It may have made sense if she’d been alive in the fifties, but she was born in 1973, so she had no excuse.  Nevertheless, they’re family, so I took my place and prayed for patience.

“How lovely you look this evening darling,” Kelly-Anne commented in her syrupy Southern accent.  “Barbara, would you be a dear and pass the preserves?”

Barbara-Jean leaned forward for the sweet peaches, tilting her cotton candy bouffant over grandma’s candles. Just a slight wobble and the outdated style caught on the flickering wicks.  The fire ringing her head reminded me of an angel’s halo, but Barbara-Jean was no heavenly being. She shrieked loud enough to scare the birds further south for the winter.

My father ran to the kitchen for the fire extinguisher.

Kelly-Anne flapped her arms. “Gracious darling, your hair’s in flames!”  Apparently, she forgot Southern Belles don’t shout.

Mother attempted to douse the flames with the water from her crystal goblet. However, the hairspray Barbara-Jean covered her hair with every morning fueled the fire.  By the time the inferno was extinguished, the bouffant was little more than a poodle cut.  It took grandma three days, seven vanilla scented candles, and two bottles of Febreeze to remove the stench.  Barbara-Jean gained a little sense that day and never wore her hair in a bouffant again, moving to the sixties with a beehive.