“And it took me forever to clean the damn kitchen! If that man would learn I’d prefer a reservation to his cooking, I’d be so happy…” Michelle’s voice trails off as her office door snicks shut.
Jane pauses her filing, transported back in time to her mother’s kitchen, her child self scrubbing those hated copper-bottomed pans with steel wool until they gleamed. What she wouldn’t give for a meal home-cooked just for her! For her own kitchen to clean!
Her mother’s kitchen, closed to her since their estrangement. It seems a lifetime ago now, in a country now foreign.
Every week at the Carrot Ranch Literary Community, Charli Mills hosts the 99-word flash fiction challenge. This week’s prompt: “In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story about Copper Country. It can be any place, fictional, historical, or on another planet. Go where the copper leads.”
99 Monkeys 
Wow, you sure made that prompt work for you. It works!
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Thanks! I had trouble with it at first, but then something just clicked.
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Great take, made me nostalgic about my own home! And loved that picture of the pots and pans!
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Thank you!
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What some complain about, others would want one more chance at. You captured the longing well in this one, Deborah. And I recall cleaning those copper bottom pots of my grandmother’s with a steel pad and powder.
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The things we never think we’ll miss…
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And evidently, ketchup would have worked. But see, when we were kids, tasked with ugly chores, we had no internet to find an easier way!
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A very nostalgic piece. It’s interesting to see how different people look at the same things differently. I hope Jane gets her home cooked meal.
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Thanks! I hope she does too!
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