Harriet Houdini

#RealFlashbytes by #PhiliipLoyd #realwritersmarket

I used to live with this actress girl, years ago when I was young. She was diabetic, had to take insulin shots every day. I couldn’t stand needles, couldn’t stand even watching. It was a good thing she had no problem injecting herself.

The diabetes made her tired. She took naps a lot. She was moody, depressed, and I would have broke it off, except she was sick, and I just couldn’t do it, even though I wasn’t in love with her any more.

But in the end she was the one who broke up with me, moved away, and that was the last I ever heard of her. Until last week when her father called to tell me she had died

He wanted to know how long she had the habit, and what I knew about it. I had never spoken to her father before. She never even talked about him

“The habit?” I said.

He told me it was no use playing dumb, that he knew all about it.

“Did she pick it up from you?” he said, and I could tell how angry he was.

“The drugs,” he said. “Was it you who got her hooked on drugs?”

Drugs. It was drugs. I was so naïve.

Before trying his hand at fiction, Philip Loyd spent a lifetime as a financial and insurance writer, contributing to Forbes, McGraw Hill, and Jim Kramer’s The Street, among others. Loyd now writes fiction and reference books exclusively.. Titles available at Amazon.com.