Short Fiction: Looks Just Like the Sun

 Now live on LitBreak, Looks Just Like the Sun was a semi-finalist for the Broken Social Scene/House of Anansi short fiction contest in 2013.

 “Hey, Dan. Borrow your twelve-gauge? Gotta go shoot up a house.”

Yeah. Like that would fly with a guy you haven’t seen in three years. Maybe put “Merry Christmas” first?” While he waited, Marcel shifted kindling from the porch’s woodpile into his backpack and crammed the day’s Northern Times in on top. He zipped up just as the door opened.

“Marcel. Thought you was in rehab.”

“They let me out for the holidays.”

He was supposed to be at Odelle’s in Hearst already, two dry weeks for the recovering drunken Indian. She’d be pissed when he didn’t show up, afraid he had veered into the first bar instead, but this side-trip was her Christmas present. She’d understand.

He followed Dan indoors, dropping his backpack and parka on a chair. He kicked the snow off his boots but kept them on, against the cold and the decades of dirt on the hallway floor.

“Borrow your twelve-gauge?”

“You going bush in this weather?”

“Nope. Gonna shoot up a house. You can have the shotgun back right after.”

Dan peered at him, unsure about the humour. “That’d make me an accessory. They’d throw both our asses in the can.”

“No place else to go until spring.” Marcel pulled a chair toward the gray-topped table, nudging aside a sleeping mutt with his boot.

Read the rest at LitBreak. Looks Just Like the Sun

Rooted in my teen years living in Kapuskasing, and written in part as tribute to friends who survived the foster care system, this story is a companion piece to "Trail of the Wolf" which won the NOWW short fiction contest in 2013.

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