Forgot I wrote this

In looking through my emails for something completely unrelated, I found this bit of flash fiction that I wrote for the heck of it. I re-read it and like the darned thing. So here you go.

HIS NAME WAS BUD

By Roy L. Pickering Jr.

 

 

His name was Bud. He hated when random strangers addressed him as "buddy", so close to accidentally guessing his actual name. Of course, they did not know that his name was Bud, much less that it wasn't short for Buddy. It was an abbreviation of “Rosebud” and his mother picked the name from some old Black & White movie that he had never bothered to watch. He didn't know if his mother had expected a girl or decided on Rosebud as her child’s name regardless of gender. What mattered is that he could not very well go around allowing himself to be called Rosebud, so for better or worse, Bud it was.

It had mostly been for the worse. Life had been hard and mean to him so far. His father had not bothered to stick around long enough to find out that his mother would die giving birth to him. This meant being raised by an aunt on his mother's side until he turned 5 and she turned and took him to an orphanage, done with being responsible for the mistakes of others, family or not.

At 18 he was officially a man, out on his own, no direction or plan or clue as what to do next. Robbing a convenience store seemed like as good of an idea as anything else. Next time, if there was a next time, Bud would do a little more research to find out in advance if the guy behind the counter was likely to have a gun back there, and if he would be inclined to use it.

Getting shot in the gut hurt like hell because of course it did. Bud's big plan collapsed on itself and now he had nothing better to do than to sit on the floor, press against the rapidly leaking hole in his stomach, and wait to see if the cops or an ambulance would arrive soon enough to do him any good.

Bud looked towards the window for whoever might be coming to his rescue, but most of the view was blocked by stuff for sale, and the bit of glass he could see was too filthy to be transparent. His eyes were growing heavy, but he refused to let them close for good reason and fixed his sight on a rack of DVD's. Maybe one of the movies was the one his mom had picked his name from.

 Wouldn't that be something?