Amongst my mother-in-law's hoarded treasures, a rusted Normal Rockwell tin weighted down ... [+]
Thomas Elson’s short stories, poetry, and flash fiction have been published in numerous venues, including The Cabinet of Heed, Ellipsis, and Flash Frontier. "For Seven Years" is in Short Circuit #06, Short Édition's quarterly review.
Each morning his face flushed as he remembered the boy's words, "I want that shovel. It's just like yours." And each morning he fell to his knees, extended his arms, then plunged his hands into the sand on the beach. He had started seven years ago, progressed to a shovel, then a metal detector, but recently returned to digging with his hands. He always began in the last place they played, crawled a few feet, and continued until he reached the campground fence behind the curve in the beach that gave this location its name. At that point he turned and moved a few feet closer to the dune and forc