TBC Publishing Pride Month Flash Fiction Challenge, #9 of 30

TBC Publishing Pride Month Flash Fiction Challenge, 9 of 30

Title: My Hero, The Green Lantern

Author: R. Scott Tyler

Genre: Fantasy

Word count (500 max): 484

Garth and I had been buddies since grade school when my parents bought the house next to theirs in Coopertown. My mom was a high school teacher, except in the summer, when she would catch rattlesnakes in the upper half of our state, extracting the venom for medical use and experimentation at the local community college.

I often got to tag along with Mom to the parks and farms she visited because there was usually lots of stuff to do, and I’d invite Garth along whenever I could.

On one particularly hot day in August, the three of us were headed to a state park more than an hour west of town.

“Okay, Mark, you know the drill. Don’t take your watch off, and Garth, both of you keep your phones with you all the time, right?” Mom was giving us the backpack with food and water she’d packed for us.

“Got it, Mom,” I answered, having heard this talk a few times before. She could track us on our phones and my watch, which is why she’d bought it for me and why she reminded us to keep track of them.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Chavez, I plan on finding a spot with sun and water and chilling,” Garth answered.

“Great,” Mom said, “Don’t swim alone, and don’t get sunburned too badly or Mable will chew me out.”

Mable was Garth’s mom, but Garth was already pretty dark. A few hours in the sun wouldn’t show on him, and Mable certainly would not care. I thought his dark skin was one of the hottest things about him.

It was unlikely that I would get Garth to explore a cave with me, so once we found a spot to hang out with some sun, shade, and water, I wandered off.

“I’ll wait for you to come back, and we can swim together,” Garth said, confirming that he wasn’t going to explore with me.

A couple of hours later, I was climbing a near-vertical cliff wall, and a gecko scrambled out of a crevice where I tried to get a handhold. I panicked (I’d have to make up something better to tell Mom) and ended up flying backwards and landing on my back. I thoroughly got the wind knocked out of myself and blacked out.

The next thing I know, the Green Lantern (the black one, not the lizard one) was kneeling over my prone body, alternately slapping me and sucking on my face. When I finally got my wind back, I realized it wasn’t the Green Lantern, but Garth who was rather clumsily giving me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

A few moments after I started to stick my tongue in his mouth whenever he brought it next to mine, he started giggling and finally just sat back on his haunches, smiling at me.

“Not the Green Lantern, then, I guess,” I said.

“Not even close,” he replied.

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