The Pygmy Giant

by Jennifer Stakes

Almost shaking with frustration, Jack slammed the drawer shut. His family knew to keep back at times like these and they watched his tight-faced rage as he tore through the living room, hurling cushions off chairs and knocking Lilian’s neat pile of coffee-table books to the floor, where the colourful, glossy paper crumpled under their weight. Lilian had trained herself to put the blame for Jack’s thoughtless destruction on herself. Obviously the wrong place to keep my best books, she thought, ignoring the damage.

Jack turned to look at his family, lined up out of the way against the wall.

“Where?” he screamed.

His anger was met with practiced quietness and shaking heads. They knew that violence was imminent but still they held strong against his rage. It would all be over soon.

“Where?”

Blank looks.

Forgetting them, Jack turned his attention to the pile of video cassettes that were stacked up on the floor, his actions more focussed on the outpouring of his annoyance now rather than to the object of his search, which he had almost forgotten in his temper. The front stack toppled under the storm of irritation.

A wink of metallic colour made him freeze, one hand ready to topple another tower of cassettes. Hardly breathing, he moved the remaining plastic boxes out of the way, slowly, as if wishing too hard would made the brightness fade. Carefully, carefully, Jack cleared a space around the thing that he had found and his family watched his movements with relief, catching each other’s eyes and smiling.

Jack turned to face his family, the treasure clutched tightly in his hot hands, his four-year-old face beaming with utter joy. His first Easter Egg.

Jennifer Stakes writes in any genre that will take her: poetry, novels, short stories, and recently blogging. She is fuelled by tea.