Flash Fictions by Benjamin D. Togate

The Distance Between

“You get down here. Now!”

She pointed at me. Her frown went across her whole face - not just the forehead. She meant business.

But no, I wouldn’t get down. I refused to leave my safe haven.

As ever so often, I was sitting on the rooftop of our small house, watching the clouds turning purple, the sun being swallowed by the ocean and the lighthouse starting to circle his lights to the fisherboats in the sea.

Oh, how I wished I was on one of these boats. Tasting the salty waves, feeling the soft swaing of the boat in the current. But getting up of that roof and watching those boats and the ocean was as close as I could get to him.

So no, I won’t get down.

“Com’ on!” my sister yelled impatiently and annoyed. “You’ll catch a cold out here and besides, dinner is ready.”
I slowly looked down to her.
“I’m not hungry” I said in a mellow, emotionless tone. This is how I talked now.

She kept staring at me. Annoyed, angry and then suddenly… I saw a different side of her. But for only a split second. Because it was the moment she turned around.

“FINE!!!” she yelled, running inside and slamming the door behind her.

I was glad. I could go back to staring onto the ocean in peace.

Except, I couldn’t. Something bothered me about that face of hers I had just seen. It looked different as normal, but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was. So I tried to let it go and focus on what I was doing before she came to disturb me in my thoughts.

I was missing dad. It had been a year, but I just couldn’t come to terms with the fact that he was gone. He was all I had in this world.

But when I was coming up here to stare at the ocean, I wasn’t sad. I remembered all those fun times we had. How we ran across the fields in the summer. How me and sis played by the boat at the beach. How we helped him unload the fish and carry them to the market. I would never forget that awful smell… yet I missed it. It was so normal back than. In fact me and sis were even teased in school for it on occasion. They’d call sis a smelly fish and me “the squid”. Usually I laughed it off, but if they made my sister cry, I’d punch their faces.

Dad never punished me. He apologized to the school and promised he would deal with me. Yet he never did. Maybe he felt guilty. For working a labour job. For not having lots of money. For working hard everyday to provide for us. But I never cared. I was so proud of him and his fishing boat. He was the kindest and yet the strongest man I knew.

Until one day, he was just gone.

It was quite traumatic for me and my sister. His boat capsisted and he drowned. But he was a provider and knew the dangers of his job. He had always promised that we’d be taken care of in case… and he lived up to that promise – well, he died with it. His life insurance meant we were good until graduating college. We didn’t have to worry. But the grief was unbearable. Even though a year had passed, I didn’t believe he wasn’t coming home anymore.

Maybe that was why I was sitting on the roof each night, looking out to the ocean, waiting for his boat steering into the harbour.
But it was getting dark outside and his boat never came. Now only the stars and the houses around me radiated some light. Our house remained dark. I wondered what sis was doing. I realized I hadn’t spoken to her much in the last few months. I was too engulved in my own thoughts and grief.

“SIS?” I yelled.
It didn’t take long for her to emerge.
“WHAT?” she said in an angry tone.
“How… are you?” I said looking down. My tone wasn’t mellow anymore. It was kind, caring, worried. I really wanted to know.

And that’s all it took.

My sister burst into tears. I instantly understood the face I had seen earlier. She always seemed so strong. But she was griefing, just as I was. She was traumatized, just as I was. She was sad and lonely – just like me. And she was probably worried about my growing seclusion.

I realized trying to get close to my father, a dad man, I allowed the distance to my sister grow.

“I’m sorry sis” I said, extending my hand out to her. “Let’s talk”