Although the mystery/suspense genre is my favorite—both to read and write, I occasionally stray from the dark side. I wrote the following piece of flash fiction as an in-class prompt during a short story class I took last fall. The prompt was “My daughter…” Although I have no kids, I was hooked on The X-Factor at the time so this is what I came up with. Hope you enjoy:

Pipe Dreams

My daughter was determined to audition for the X-Factor.

“But, honey,” I said, “when you sing, you sound like a stallion getting gelded.”

“I do not, Mom! All my friends tell me I have a beautiful voice.”

“And that’s why they call them friends. They don’t have the heart to tell you the truth.”

“You just don’t want me to succeed. To get a five million dollar recording contract and move out of this dump.”

We continued to go back and forth, but there was no stopping her. She’d inherited her daddy’s stubborn streak. So we packed up the car and drove down to Charlotte where they were holding the auditions. When it was her turn, she walked onto that big, old stage with four thousand people staring at her. She took one look at the audience and turned tail. She came flying down the stairs and straight into my arms.

“Oh, Mom. It’s all your fault. I kept thinking about what you said and I couldn’t go through with it.”

“You’re right, honey. It’s all my fault. If it wasn’t for me, you’d a won that five million dollars.”

We got back into the car and drove home. Two weeks later, she’s still not talking to me.