Winter writing competition

My mother’s corked her second successive bottle of wine.

My father’s Bermuda shorts are as undignified as they are tight.

And the dog is in love.

Oh, and we’re on holiday in a caravan park.

Please someone tell me that I was adopted.

Now mater and pater's regression to state o' nature, bottle and parental neglect was foretold.

But I had higher hopes for “man’s best friend”.

The pristine rubber bone and unclaimed tennis ball under the caravan proffered evidence that Hergé had woefully misjudged canine loyalty.

I pleaded with the dog that she was wasting her time, it would all end in tears and promises made on vacation are never packed into the suitcase for the journey home.

Her retort was that dogs have holiday romances too, standard anthropomorphic rules had been suspended in the name of literary fiction and, as an only child, shouldn’t I have an imaginary friend waiting for me down at the arcades.

So I tried to find solace in the warmth of the 10p oasis.

But all I found were “bigger boys”, and the law of the jungle.

My attempt at a boy’s own fortnight had culminated in a boy on his own, hands rarely leaving the pockets of his shorts.

On the final evening, as punishment for kicking over the sandcastles made by the evil twins from the neighbouring caravan, I’d been banished to the sand dunes to find two lovesick, shagging Alsatians.

The two discarded dog collars at the end of the windbreaker left no doubt that true love finds a way for all species.

So as I trudged off, flimsy flip flops offering no resistance to landmine crabs and tripwire seaweed, I thought to myself:

Aren’t poignant childhood moments supposed to take place under a sunset on a beach?

[Re-edited to fit the 300 word limit]

What’s the least a person can do?
This question has been on my mind for some time. I blink infrequently. Benumbed with fatigue I’m heaped on the sofa staring at nothing. Saliva is gathering into a pool, and I think about swallowing. Is this depression? It appears to be, yet, with guilty satisfaction I realise I’m not depressed, I’m just idle.  The future beckons. A sunset on the beach, picnics midweek, slumping in some beer garden, getting a lift home. If I’d a million pounds it’d give me the luxury of slothfulness, inertia.
But I don’t have a million pounds, I have ten. And, goddammit, that tenner is all the way in the bank. Parties on the beach? Picnics?  At some point someone is going to ask for money, and I’ve got rent to pay. Beer will definitely cost more than a tenner too. Whichever way I cut it, this is gonna require effort.
Bollocks. I don’t want a picnic during the week anyway. The wind is always too windy. Beaches smell funny. Beer makes me wanna piss, and that means getting up.

So what about the future? I have images of laughter and frolics, abstract, saturated with colour. Is that a female?  Is that… kids? I suppose I do want kids. And a car. I can’t make out what car, but beggars can’t be choosers. But anyone can have kids. And a girl – everyone’s got one. I suppose I can make the effort for those things. It’d make my mother proud. Can’t forget mum.
I count to three and stand up. A quick scrub up and I treat myself to a cold sausage. I must work, I’ll work so I can be lazy again. It’s not the noblest motivation, but I don’t need to tell anyone. That’s my secret.

When the argument started to get going properly, she was already a good distance away.
Even if they came out of the caravan now, she thought, they wouldn't be able to spot her so easily.
They were too caught up in the drama of it all anyway, as usual.
She followed the path around another row of tents just behind the shower building, straining against the uneven surface as one wheel of the push chair got caught on a root.
Lately, she had begun to question whether all adults argued (the Gooding family, at least, appeared to be able to spend their holidays peacefully, laughing and joking over the dinner table set out under the pines), and whether it was normal that she got so afraid.
It had begun when her dad had caught her mum’s finger in the car door outside a restaurant. Her mum screamed like she had never heard her scream before, and her dad said: “shut up, stupid bitch”. Having freed her bleeding finger from the car, her mum then refused to enter “a restaurant where people know I’m a stupid bitch”. She would have laughed at that if it wasn’t so sad. “I want to go home”, her mum said, and she had climbed back in the car as her dad drove them back to the campsite.
Immediately, he started to disassemble the tent. “I didn’t mean ‘home’”, he mum cried, exhausted, “I meant, back here!”
She didn’t want to hear anymore, so she took her little brother, put him in the push chair and started walking.
She didn’t care that she was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes; all she wanted was a sunset on the beach.
“Look”, she told her little brother as they watched the red sun go down over the bay.