Beau

By Mike Ramon

A short story. On a hot summer day, a family sits down to eat lunch. A visitor is about to arrive; his appearance will plunge the family's day into terror,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Ramon
• Release date: Apr 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005395933

Mike Ramon

Born and bred in the Midwest.

Book preview

BEAU

Mike Ramon

© 2021 M. Ramon

Smashwords Edition

This work is published under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0). To view this license:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

If you wish to contact the author you can send e-mail to:

[e-mail]

Web addresses where you can find my work:

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mramon

It was the last Sunday in July, in the thick of what people call the dog days, and the air conditioner was busted. Charlie woke up in the morning to the sound of an argument between his folks over the business with the AC. His dad had promised that the AC wouldn’t give them any more problems after he’d paid his buddy Freddie to fix the thing just two weeks previously. Melinda Hannon, wife of Ted and mother of Charlie and Elaine, had insisted that her husband hire a professional. Ted balked at the cost. Freddie knew what he was doing, Ted insisted, and he’d be far cheaper. So now, with the temp hanging just a smidge below triple digits, the family sat around the table eating lunch together with sweat dripping slowly down their faces.

Charlie, twelve years old and short for his age, would’ve much preferred to be in the family den playing video games on the big TV in there, but his mom was on this new kick about the family eating at the dining room table together. Charlie thought he’d wait until they were done with lunch before asking (with his sweetest, most adorable face on) if Hunter could come over to play games. He usually had great success with his sweetest, most adorable face, but he could see that his mom was still upset over the AC fiasco, and so he gauged his chances this time to be about sixty percent.

Elaine, five years younger than