Pictures Lie

"Family gathering" by m01229 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Marta shrank into herself as Uncle Alf, getting drunker by the minute, turned up the volume. How had she forgotten this? Every family reunion started and ended the same way. Every. Damned. Time.

Her shoulders shrugged up around her ears as she tried to extricate herself from the discussion. Cliff saved her, saying, “Mart, can you come help me with something?”

“Yes!” she answered, a little too enthusiastically. She followed him through the swinging doors into the dining room, whose inhabitants were only slightly less obnoxious than those in the kitchen.

Together, they wove their way through various family members to the hallway and out into the colder but less stressful porch.

“I’m so sorry,” Marta said. How could she have invited her new boyfriend home for this reunion? She never should have let Mom guilt her into coming. She could have pled midterms and stayed on campus. Now they were stuck here for the weekend and Cliff would probably dump her as soon as they got back to school.

“It’s not that bad, really,” Cliff valiantly lied.

“It is, and it’s going to get worse. Mom’s side of the family is Democrat and Dad’s is Republican. They shouldn’t mix and they shouldn’t drink together. It’s going to get really ugly soon.”

“How ugly?”

“Barroom brawl ugly.”

“Oh. The pictures you showed me from your last reunion looked pretty peaceful.”

Marta sighed. “Yeah, they take all the pictures during the first hour so they can pretend everyone had a good time.”

Alf’s voice carried from the kitchen. “If you idiots would just shut the f—”

That’s when the fight broke out.

“Right,” Cliff said, “I think we need a romantic weekend in a hotel.”

“You’re my hero,” Marta answered, heading inside to grab their bags.

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Prompts 2 Go provided the inspiration for this story.

Prompt: Write about a gathering of some kind. The catch: throw a heavy dose of conflict into the mix. Make it a dysfunctional family get-together, an awkward class reunion, a Thanksgiving day parade gone to hell. One way to approach this is to think of the picture-perfect setting, the ideal scenario…and then flip it on its head. Make this gathering play out the way it’s not supposed to go. (Or don’t — you’re always allowed to break the rules.)

There’s a myth that family gatherings are always happy affairs. There are conflicts in all families. Some families, like Marta’s, just shouldn’t see one another!

Feel free to leave a comment and please share this story with anyone you think might appreciate it!