I get why he bites. I could let him go free, down at the rec. Dad says you need to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, but my shoes are the same as Caleb’s. It would be cruel, even though he’s Siberian, and the overnight temperatures could kill him. Kinder perhaps, than a life imprisoned? Like the woman in the pet shop had whispered when we picked him out. For whom? Mum snapped back. The woman twitched her head in my direction. I wiped the spittle flecks from Caleb’s chin, tucking the boxed hamster onto his lap.
Mum says “projecting” your feelings onto others isn’t helpful. He may be perfectly happy with his locked-in world. I’d be happier if I didn’t have to look after him so much, but I do it because Caleb can’t. What’s a few chewed fingers between brothers?
Outside it’s started snowing. I tie on Caleb’s furry hat, push his hands into my ski gloves with the Velcro wrist straps. At the rec we go full Genghis, like the hamster in its wheel. Caleb’s chair kicks up frosted turfs like galloping hooves as we charge across the empty football pitch. I whoop at full volume, while his arms flail and battle through the marauding hoards. Incoming arrows fly thick and fast, but together, we duck and dodge every one.
Tracy Fells was the 2017 Regional Winner (Europe and Canada) for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her short fiction has been widely published in print and online. Her comic novella-in-flash Hairy on the Inside is published by Ad Hoc Fiction and The Naming of Moths, her short collection, is out now from Fly On The Wall Press. X: @theliterarypig More at www.TracyFells.com.
'Full Genghis' was first published in Dandelion Years (Bath Flash Fiction Volume Seven), December 2022.
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