“Lain and the Brats, 1972” by C. Massar

Lain and the Brats, 1972

Lain’s eyebrows knitted together like she thought her scowl could cause combustion—and it might have, given enough time. We’d lost her car. Not, lost, lost, but we were the reason that she didn’t have access to the Ford for her drive-in movie date. She’d been the one to call us—bad-word-brats—just for asking his name in front of our parents. “What self-respecting girl dated a boy that couldn’t drive, anyway?” Nana opined from her rocking chair, knitting a baby blanket in the corner for what she saw as the inevitable near-future.

by C. Massar
C. Massar is the author of two science fiction books and knows a thing or two about installing windows. He lives outside of Topeka with three cats and the mule Ted.


On Writing Prompts

I enjoy the freedom of writing prompts. Sometimes they’re very constrictive and I’m not as interested in those, but having just a couple things to guide you is a pleasant way into a new piece.

This piece was sparked by the 2020 Writing Exercise Series #347: Beginning & Ending with Knitting 37 which was to begin the piece with someone knitting their eyebrows and end it with someone knitting a blanket.

If you would like to nominate this piece for our year-end Reader’s Choice Award click here and donate. $1 = nomination

Please do not forget to mention the piece you’re nominating. To learn more about the award click here, but in short, the piece with the most $1 nominations at the end of the year will get half of the donated money, receive 20 copies of a limited edition broadside designed for their piece and have their post pinned to the front of the website for all of December. This is one of the only ways we raise money for the magazine in order to pay all of our wonderful writers and keep this lights on here at Sparked.