"Hey Watermelon Man!"
And he would hack the juicy fruit to pieces with practiced ease and I would devour it, the sticky red chaos all around me. It was a ritual.
Until one day, "Hey Watermelon Man!" as he came around the corner only it wasn't him, it was her. She handled the knife a little more slowly, and the pieces of cold, crisp melon were different somehow. But one look at her fresh face, and who was I to judge?
Later, when I had lapped all the sweetness I was going to get out of the rind, she returned, her face looking more care-worn, beads of sweat glistening on her brow. She had cast aside her shoes and unbuttoned the top button of her dress, and as she slouched down and sliced one of her remaining supply, she looked lonely.
"Hey Watermelon Man!" and I laughed to show I was joking. Her eyes lit on me and she beckoned me over and we silently shared the fruit, warm now from the sun.
And who am I to say that that was the beginning of our love?
So there's this jazz song called "Watermelon Man," and that's all I could think of, except this was clearly no man.
I'm doing it a bit differently this week. I've written something which I believe cleaves to the requirements, but I'm not going to verify the word count while I'm writing it. Then I'm letting it sit for a bit and I'll come back and do what edits need to be done. Because while simply putting words on the page is a good exercise, editing them to make them work is equally good exercise, and fortunately Flash Fiction Friday provides a mechanism to stretch both muscles a little.
I'll write more about the editing process when I do it, but the writing process is mostly as usual, except I decided that there would be no dialogue other than "Hey Watermelon Man!" How many different ways can you say those three words? Probably more than I've used here.
And the editing process was nonexistent because I managed to, without counting, write precisely the number of words necessary to fulfill the challenge. I am the champion! Sorry if you were planning on an in-depth discussion of editing. I'm not touching a thing.
You're probably expecting me to make some reference to stretching muscles here and then to exhort you to go to Max's blog and join in the fun, but I'm not going to do that this week because it doesn't seem to work. You're adults (I hope, anyway; if you're not, I hope you have a parent's permission to read this). You can figure out what you want to do. I respect your agency.
