Mother and I hide in the bathroom. Dad yells outside the window each night. Calls Mother a social criminal. A dreamer. He’ll make me a fighter.

Some nights he fires his guns. Never blasts the windows. Just blasts into the air.

We’ve been camped out three months.

Mother proclaims the bathroom a kingdom, bathtub my throne. She’ll protect the king, she says, with a fervency that makes me cry.

She slumbers on the floor as Dad blasts. I try to give up the throne.

She says the king must reign.

I wish I could give Mother everything. Safety. A throne.

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. His story “Soon,” was nominated for a Pushcart and he has also had work nominated for The Best Small Fictions. Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in journals such as Terror House Magazine, blink-ink, Silent Auctions, City. River. Tree. and Ariel Chart.

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