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by Christine H. Chen
My favorite Uncle who likes to buy me toys is a fuzzy and warm animal. He holds my hand in his snuggly paw while I skip and squeeze a new rubber deer with a pink bow that lets out squelching sounds until we return home and Uncle slumps in the family couch, yawning.
“So lazy and useless,” Ah Ma clucks, and pecks on his hair to wake him up, “Why don’t you learn some tricks, see if you can dance your fat ass in a circus, and send money to feed our Ma, why do I have to be the piggy bank of the family?”
He growls and balloons into a wild bear, stands on his hind legs, shows his canines. Angry squawks and snarls and feet stomping shake the house, fur balls and feathers fly in the living room. Rubber Deer screeches with every pump of my fingers as I silently pray, hidden under the dining table, “go Bear, go Bear!”
Christine H. Chen’s fiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Ghost Parachute, Time & Space Magazine, Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions, Best Microfiction 2024, Best Small Fictions 2024, and elsewhere. Find her at www.christinehchen.com and @ChristineHChen1
