Divide and Conquer
— Short Fiction —
Marlena’s father gave her the soldiers on her sixteenth birthday. First they’d had giant slices of coconut cake with her grandparents and her brothers, and then he’d taken her hand and guided her to the shed behind the house. It was padlocked and only he had the key; a tiny silver thing with a blue plastic top shaped like a sunfish.
Though she prayed the trip to the shed was an elaborate way of gifting her a new cell phone, she didn’t get her hopes up. Her father had a look on his face like he’d swallowed a beetle. Wrenching the door open, it dragged through the grass grown tall along the stoop and he had to yank it hard to make it wide enough for them to get inside.
“Hold this,” he said, handing her a red and white shoebox, beat up and spongey from living in the damp. “Don’t open it yet.”
Inside the shed smelled like gasoline from the lawnmower and the tart, metallic scent of old coffee cans stuffed with rusty screws. Once her father closed the door, there was barely enough light to see and definitely not enough room for both of them to stand comfortably. They stepped on each other’s feet before finding space for their legs between the weed wacker, the leaf blower, and a Tupperware container full of coiled garden hose.
