Demons and Other Inconveniences

by Dan Dillard

  *****

  I look around at all the parents sitting in cars like some twisted assembly line. It’s absurd how we are herded about. Other mothers smile at me and I can’t help but want to smack each of them. I smile back out of courtesy, not kindness. I feel like squeezing their faces. Soon enough, children find their vehicles and one by one, they peel out of the loading zone like stock cars from the pits. Then they all go and do whatever they do. May each of those happy, smiling bitches have a pig-man of their own.

  Finally, out bounds my little bundle who hops in the car and says not Hello mommy or Thanks for picking me up, mommy, but “Mommy, I’m starving.”

  “Well that’s great because I thought we’d go out to eat tonight.”

  I turn around with a smile to meet hers. She’s grinning ear to ear. “Yay! Can we go to the pancake place?”

  “We can, and we shall. I think I’ll have pancakes too.”

  And bacon. Loads of fucking bacon.

  She finishes buckling her seatbelt and we speed off to stuff ourselves with pancakes for dinner. Checking on her in the rearview mirror reveals she is busy with her stuffed pig, making him dance on her lap and giggling at him lightheartedly.