FFF Winner: Janine Canty!

I'm pleased to introduce this week's FFF winner, Janine Canty! We had an extremely active FFF this week, with more than twenty outstanding entries, so it was very hard to winnow out just one winner. (Go check out some of the great ones in the comments from the prompt!) However I absolutely fell in love with this story. It's a little longer than the average FFF, but it draws you in immediately with its use of imagery, character building and scene setting. The twisted ending was not only a surprise but a wonderful use of ironic humor!

Janine says: I live in very northern Maine where I work as a med technician in a busy 86 bed nursing facility. I learned to read at the age of 4, and would read everything I could get my hands on, including the back of the cereal box if there was nothing else. I began writing at 11. I loved creative writing, and wanted to major in Journalism. But took a detour into Motherhood first. Writing has been a dream I’ve carried for over 30 years. Each year it’s gotten a little louder.  “A friend in need” will be my first  ‘published’ foray into fiction. I had a blog, which I’m considering reviving. It can be found at www.jancan-mzbehavin.blogspot.com  It’s title is “Positively Neurotic Me”  and it was actually born out of e mails I would send to friends.    Again... thank you SO much for the opportunity to be showcased on your wonderful site!

Please enjoy her entry for A Friend in Need.


Missy was unpredictable. I think that was even written in her yearbook somewhere. Bold green pen strokes thrown across her double mint smile, ‘Unpredictable’! It fit. She was the one who spray painted the boys locker room in neon purple, and than dyed her hair to match. Her mom had her late in life. Nothing got the woman too excited. She took Missy to her hairdresser, and to confession in the same afternoon. We’d grown up side by side in a small town where nothing much ever happened. Where men discussed sports scores across the filling stations at the Sunoco. Where women gossiped in the aisles at Wal- Mart, and in the doctors waiting room. Toddlers covered in hives and chicken pox sitting at their ankles. It could have been any one of a thousand towns. White bread in the lunch boxes, and pot roast for Sunday dinner. Totally, utterly, despairingly, predictable. Missy stood out like a sunflower in winter. Everyone loved her. Everyone followed her. Everyone wanted to be her. If you've ever wondered what kind of person would be bold enough, brazen enough, and desperate enough to actually pound on a door at 4:01 Am, that would be Missy. I didn't hesitate when the knock came. I came up out of sleep easily enough. I’d only been half dreaming anyway. My stomach in a nervous knot, waiting for 8 Am and the meeting that could change my white bread existence forever . I made my way through the maze of beanbags and cheap Ikea end tables that passed for my living room. I opened the door without hesitation. I opened the door at 4:01 AM without looking through a peephole, or even asking who it was. My mother would have been horrified. I didn't have to look. I didn't have to ask. I fully expected Missy to be standing in front of me. I just didn't expect her to be soaking wet. I stuck my head out onto the dimly lit porch behind her, smelling jasmine and bug repellent. “Is it raining”? She put her hand on her amber colored hair. As if she was searching for confirmation of the facts. “Ohhh.... No. I ran through the sprinklers at Lincoln Park”. Like that was a thing normal 20 something year olds did in the middle of the night. I bit back a long suffering sigh as I pulled her inside like a naughty child. “I’ll get towels.... and coffee” Her words stopped me like a bullet. “I killed him”. Her voice carried a tinge of hysteria, and something unidentified. Maybe laughter. I stopped so abruptly my pinkie toe caught the edge of an Ikea table. The pain didn't register. The sound of my own voice was foreign as I answered her. “This is going to call for something stronger than coffee."
Somehow we were sitting around my Formica table at 4:12 Am . Chipped mugs containing coffee and more than a splash of brandy. My hands shaking in that way you know is going to go on for a while. One of the biggest moments of my life was waiting for me in less than 4 hours, and I would be looking it in the eye with a hangover. I asked the obvious “What happened”? She bit a corner of her full bottom lip, and fussed with the cheerful place mat underneath her cup. “I just couldn't stand it anymore, you know”? My first thought was: ‘Honey... I don’t know how you ever stood it in the first place’. My second thought was a little more appropriate, given our ages. “This isn't algebra or your curfew we're
talking about here. It’s a human life. There are laws, or rules, or something against this”. I think the brandy may have been kicking in. Missy and Donnie had been living together for over two years. No wedding ring or even vague promise of it anywhere in her future. If ever there was a human being made to find himself staring down the wrong end of a rifle barrel, it was Donnie Waslow. Yep. That’s his actual name. Waslow. Sort of says it all, doesn’t it? It was the football that drew them to one another. She cheered in her short skirts, and he busted tackles with pecs and abs that promised greater things later. He never delivered. He left the best parts of himself on a high school football field. Hard abs turned to fat from too many beers and ring dings. A tooth broken out in a bar fight, over a girl wearing cheap mascara, and no underwear. Donnie spent his time these days throwing orders at Missy from his recliner. A pyramid of beer cans littering every available surface of their tiny living room. Missy spent her days answering his ever whim. Lord forbid the man ever get an itch in an unmentionable place. She spent her evenings hustling trays of steaks and burgers at the Denny’s on the highway. Her shoulders aching, and her bottom getting pinched by every trucker this side of nowhere. “We have to get out of here.... you’re not busy, right??? We could go to the Bahamas” Her voice interrupted my reverie on what she called a life. I pushed the cup away from me, and swept my hand impatiently through my sleep tangled curls. “Missy... I have the most important meeting of my life in exactly..... 3 hours”. My eyes close a moment as the horror of this situation hits me. ... “And you’re not telling me WHAT HAPPENED”???” Missy stood up so fast she sent the chair skittering into a cabinet behind her. She begins pacing like an expectant father in a 1950’s movie. “He was always staring at me” I don’t want to interrupt her to point out that this is hardly reason to kill someone. Even someone as slimy and icky as Donnie Waslow. “and he smelled so bad”.... I can’t argue with that one. “He’s been leaving his droppings everywhere... do you know what it’s like to scrub poop out of the carpet at the end of a 12 hour shift at Denny’s”? Happily, I do not. I’m getting that sinking feeling in my belly. The one you get when the swing moves backwards too fast. The pieces are falling quickly into the Rubiks cube of my brandy filled head. “Missy.... Where’s Donnie”? She gives me a look like the bartender throws me when I've had enough at last call. She moves the brandy bottle further out of my reach. She addresses me like I’m her six year old brother running around the kitchen with her bra on my head. She chooses her words slowly and carefully at first. “ Donnie is in bed. Snoring. I’m getting kind of sick of him, too” There are moments you will remember forever. Moments that will come back to you again and again during your lifetime. Standing at an altar marrying the love of your life. Standing in the frozen food aisle trying to decide between peas or corn for supper. Sitting in the sun at a nursing home waiting for your family to come visit. When you've reached the end of your rope with someone , when you cannot take one more step into unpredictable, the end of a friendship is a sharp sound. Like the sound of someone rapping at your door at 4:01 Am. I look into the beautiful, unpredictable, face of my best friend for what I know will be the final time I answer her with disbelief and heartache cracking my voice. “You expect me to walk away from possibly the biggest opportunity of my life. Because you killed your boyfriends ugly hamster”?