Here’s my latest Flash Fiction for the prompt “The blue ones were her favourite” from Anna Spargo-Ryan

**Trigger Warning**

Every Tuesday morning her Mummy had to go to work early and NewDaddy took her to school.

It meant that she didn’t sleep very well on Monday nights.  Mostly she didn’t sleep at all.  She just lay there, waiting.  She liked to imagine that Tuesday morning was already over, and she was safe and sound at school with Mrs Fletcher and all the other kids, and the only thing she had to worry about was whether to play on the oval or the sandpit at big lunch.

She tried lots of things to get away from NewDaddy and the things he said she had to do, but it didn’t make any difference.  Or, it did make a little difference: NewDaddy just got madder and when he got madder he got rougher, and he still ended up doing the same thing anyway.  So it was better just to wait in her bedroom and get it over with.

After a while she developed a little game.  She lined up all the crystals that OldDaddy had bought her before he called Mummy a stupidfatbitch and went away and didn’t come back no more.  She liked the crystals, they were cool in her hands and they were real pretty.  All the crystals had different meanings, they were supposed to bring you special powers, or something like that.  She always mixed up which one was which, and that was probably because she was a dumdumidiot and couldn’t keep things straight in her head.  But she could make the crystals go in a straight line.

When they were in a straight line she knew she would be alright once NewDaddy finished his grunting and she wouldn’t get into trouble from Mummy for making her bedhead bash against the wall, making a mark on the rentalwalls.

She always stared at the crystals in their straight straight line until NewDaddy left her room, and then she picked them up carefully and put them back in her jewellery box.  The rose quartz and the hematite and the jasper and the blue turquoise.  Sometimes she held the turquoise ones for a while.  The blue ones were her favourite.