Ed and I sit in the stairwell smoking. A security guard walks in the door. He bums a light off Ed.
“I love China,” Ed says.
I nod. We finish and walk back to the Kindergarten. The school is between a piano shop and a Costa Coffee. It is colorful. Inside the door, our boss approaches us.
“Hi Justin.”
“Hi boys.” Justin smiles. He always smiles at us, as a kind grandfather might smile toward his fat and greedy descendants.
“Where are your uniforms, boys?”
I look at Ed, Ed looks at me. We are both wearing casual dress-shirts.
Ed turns to Justin.
“We don’t want to wear them.”
Justin’s smile twitches, only a bit. “Why?”
“Well, they make us look like pedophiles,” Ed explains.
“Oh!” Justin says, then frowns “what is a pedophile?”
“It means you want to do things to kids, bad things.”
Justin’s eyes go wide. “You guys aren’t pedophiles, are you?”
“What? No,” Ed says.
Justin looks at me. I try to shake my head and roll my eyes simultaneously. It’s nauseating.
Justin takes a huge sigh, “Oh, good,” he says. “If you were,” he says, “we’d have to have a chat.”
He smiles. He pats me on the shoulder. He leaves.
I turn to Ed and frown.
“Does this mean we have to wear those stupid uniforms?”
Ed frowns after Justin.
“Haven’t a damn clue,” he mutters.
Flash-365 
It amazes me how you can write an interesting story every day, and include a perfect and compelling illustration as well. No one does flash fiction better than you.
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What nkdwhtguy said says it all. 😉
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Haha thank you. If we ever get bigger I will always remember the people who supported us here. It makes me confident enough to keep going.
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Wow. Thank you very much. I’ve spent a long time trying to get to the point where I know when to cut things and what is needed to make a story work. This makes me feel like I’ve achieved something. So thank you
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well done!
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Yes, this is an incredible performance over a whole year !!!!!
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Hi! I was just wondering where you have taught in China? I’m super curious. I’ve been living in China for the past six years and absolutely love it!
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Yeah I was in Beijing back in 2014 for a year. Where are you?
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I was in Chengdu for five years, and now am living in Shanghai. It’s great. China’s become home. And I agree, more post on China. (:
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haha okay. yeah I was talking to my friend (Ed actually) and we were talking about more stories so I will be writing them down soon.
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Curiouser and curiouser! 🙂
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Happy to hear it. I’ll be sure to write more on China.
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As always very nicely written, flash and the illustration of “invisible or should I say not palpable mother with child” is also wonderful. Linguistic problems or not, the conversation has probably become independent and distracts from the actual question!
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