InsaneJournal

Sascha's Snapshots: Session Two
Who: Sascha and VARIOUS
What: Assorted drabbles (i.e., a history in 100 words)
Where: Various locations
When: Various points in Sascha's life
Notes and Warning: The first three drabbles were expressly requested by the lovely Maren as part of a holiday writing exchange, and I got so hooked on the challenge of the 100-word-limit that I couldn't stop. Includes some brief sexual content, but this is Sascha, so you were probably expecting it. XD More to follow.


July 1990: Savannah, Georgia
Big V

Soft, fleshy thighs beneath his fingertips; hips moving against him, grinding him down into the floorboard of the station wagon; wool blanket scratching his naked skin; something coiling hot and tight in his belly; all more than his thirteen-year-old mind could handle.

She thought he was sixteen; he let her think it because she was twenty, and sixteen was closer to twenty than thirteen. She had her parents’ car, she said, and a condom. It was his first time, he said.

Five minutes later it was over, and he wondered if it would always feel like this. He hoped so.


November 1999: Manhattan, New York
First Word

It started with a gurgle. Sascha looked up from the graded papers on his desk, eyes wide.

“Annie! Annie, come here!”

“What?” Her hands were sticky with dough from the cookies she’d been making. Sascha pointed at the infant in the bouncy chair.

“She’s trying to talk!”

In a flash they’d surrounded her, coaxing and cooing and giddy with excitement. Then she opened her little mouth, and out came the first word in thick baby-slur.

“Shit.”

Pause.

Annie looked at Sascha reproachfully, but he’d already made it safely to the kitchen. From there, possibly the window.


August 2001: Central Park
Day in the Park

“We should go upstate again,” Sascha said, shifting Bella in his arms so Annie could get a better shot of them together on the lawn. The toddler giggled happily and uprooted tiny fistfuls of grass, her messy hair fluttering and dark eyes sparkling. She looked like her father.

“Maybe,” Annie said as the shutter clicked. “Money’s tight right now.” She changed angles.

“Just one weekend, that’s all,” Sascha said with a smile. “Bella would love it.”

“We’ll see,” Annie said.

They spent the next weekend in Saratoga Springs. It was the best time they’d ever had.


September 21, 2001: Manhattan, New York
Annie’s Secret

Sascha stood with the phone to his ear, listening to the nurse on the other end of the line. He’d put off checking the messages on the answering machine until after the memorial service because everything still felt so raw.

“What blood test?”

“The pregnancy test she requested, Mr. Connolly. The results are positive. Congratulations.”

Sascha hung up the phone. He deleted the rest of the messages without listening to them, then calmly hurled the machine against the wall. It shattered into a dozen tiny pieces, raining down like so many plastic tears.

He wished he’d never called.