Fragmentation

Why Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is Fiction

“Why Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is Fiction”

West cooked eggs again for dinner for him and his daughter. The flames sputtering over the pan occasionally on the stove, he now wore oven mitts while he cooked on the crappy thing, having enough burn scars to last him a lifetime.

His daughter was waiting patiently in the living room, with a bent fork and a sippy-cup full of milk. The T.V was on a channel that West put on, not for her benefit, but for his.

The eggs, slightly browned on one side and nice on the other were put on a chipped plate. Shutting off the stove, he grabbed his glass of water with one cube of ice even in this blasted weather because that was all his refrigerator could manage.

He plopped down next to his daughter on the couch, squeaking as he sat, and handed her her dinner.

“Eggs?”

“Yup,” he popped the ‘p’ at the end.

“Okay.” She sounded fine, but the look on her face was disheartened.

Gazing at his daughter, his heart sunk. She’s five years old, with hair black like his and straight like her mother’s. She looked fed, but it was clear that it wasn’t all that well. Her tan skin was paling to an orange like color, her eyes were less bright then they used to be.

His job wasn’t paying well enough anymore, they could barely afford anything. Grabbing the Powerball ticket, he felt ashamed. Why put so much hope on something so worthless, so unlikely to happen?

It’s funny, she convinced him to do it. Nothing straightforward, hell, she has no idea what a Powerball ticket is, but it was something she had said at the grocery store where he bought this.

“Putting hope in the little things, even if they don’t look like much, is what makes the day better,” and he bought the ticket right then when she said it.

She, though, had been talking about her rabbit. It had been West’s brother’s when they were kids. It had an ear that has been stitched on seven times (twice, badly done by himself), he was slowly losing the Styrofoam insides that made him fluffy and nice, and the blue in his color was fading to a sickly grey color. She loved that silly bunny though, so he stuffed him up, sewed him as tight as he could, and gave it to her every night before he told her a story and put her to bed. 

The rabbit was plopped next to her on the couch, his hand being held by her tightly while West waited for the Powerball to come on. Wasn’t long now, anytime, really.

“Hey daddy?” She nudged his side. He smiled.

“Yeah sweetie?”

“Where’s mommy?”

West sighed and leaned further into the ugly couch they were in.

“That’s complicated sweetheart.” He didn’t have the courage to tell her the truth. She said she went for Broadway-which he knew was a lie. She had had no auditions aligned, no plans of staying, really. Her mother couldn’t have even tell West what show she was trying for, which would have been simple at her old job if she had just gone on Google.

Even though she was an actress (for just one pilot show that didn’t make it) she was a terrible actor. She couldn’t even tell a lie convincingly enough for even West to believe it.

“She went to try out for a play, remember?”

That didn’t stop him, though, for telling the lie better to his daughter.

“That’s one long try out.” She said simply, taking another bite of her eggs. West took a sip of water, his throat becoming dry. His hands shook with the ticket in them. He felt stupid, why did he keep lying to his daughter?