Imagine Dragons | An Author's View

The Flash Fiction Foray is upon us again, and the song The Book Blogger has chosen this week is “Monster” by Imagine Dragons.

In case you don’t know the rules, the challenge is to write a short story of fewer than 100 words based on the song title or lyrics. A challenge indeed! This week I have managed to keep my word count to fewer than 170, which is better than the monster (ha-ha, see what I did there?) offerings of, ooh, nearly 500 words I’ve submitted in the past, but the magic 100 word story still eludes me.

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Freddie was sitting on the stairs late at night, listening to Mother gossiping with the neighbours.

“The boy’s father,” exclaimed Mother, “is a real monster!”

“Monster. Monster,” agreed her companions.

Glowing with excitement, Freddie sneaked back to his bedroom to pack his meagre belongings. His dad was a real live monster – just wait till the bullies at school heard about that! Mother never did anything when Freddie came home in tears on a daily basis, other than telling him to grow a pair of balls. How was he supposed to grow balls? Why couldn’t she buy him some from the toy shop?

“Do you remember the awful things he used to do to Freddie?” Mother was saying, deaf to the front door clicking shut behind her small son. “I swear he’d have killed the child…”

Freddie didn’t hear these crucial details about the monster who’d fathered him. He was already on the streets, a bounce in his step as he set out to find his hero.