Today’s flash fiction prompt: Write about someone getting exactly what they want. Sixteen days in, I started to notice a trend in my writing topics. I wonder if you can spot it, too?
Top Shelf
Tina cursed her shortness, and not for the first time. Her hands numb with cold, she pushed tubs of rocky road and boxes of push pops to the side. She stood on her tiptoes, shivering as the skin of her arm connected with the icy shelf, and stretched her hand up and over the top. Her fingers returned with nothing but wrinkles from the moist, frigid air.
“Come on,” she muttered to herself. It was just her luck there was a shortage on nondairy ice cream. Finding a single tub of mint chip tucked away in the frozen section had been an answer to prayer. If she had to go another night with sherbet or sorbet, she’d scream, bet.
But the devious delight beckoned from the back of the highest shelf, and she’d need at least another foot to reach it. Tina did a five oh check, then hiked one foot on the bottom shelf. She gripped the top shelf with one hand and stretched out the other as she hoisted herself up.
Her index finger slipped across the front of the tub, turning it a quarter to the right. Tina grunted and hiked up her other foot, giving herself another couple of inches. Just a little further . . .
Something gave beneath her, and she stumbled back. The shelf came with her, slamming into the doorframes before releasing an avalanche of cold confections. Tina landed on her back with an oomph and covered her face to ward off wayward popsicles.
A small crowd gathered. Tina eyed the empty shelf, then searched the pile around her, filtering through oozing, busted tops until, yes, she found it, no worse for wear from the fall.
Nondairy ice cream. Mint chip. Just for her.
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