✴️ Flash Fiction Friday
CHASING THE CHOP
by Tommy Kennedy IV

Friday, the 13th of December. My mum's fortieth. Etched into my skull forever.
The night everything changed.

Tragedy struck when she was decapitated in a car crash.
The culprit? A twenty-nine-year-old Hooray Henry, high on cocaine, speeding his father's Aston Martin down a Cornish lane. His teenage girlfriend sat beside him, pickled in piss, egging him on. He’d just snorted a line — the chop — off the dashboard. Eighty miles an hour. The crash tore through the night like a gunshot.

Only my mum died. They crawled out of the wreckage, shaken but not sorry. Within minutes, his father had phoned a lawyer. A plan hatched before the police even arrived.

Six months later in Truro Crown Court, he played the injured man — crutches, crocodile tears, and a posh accent. His lawyer dropped “Eton” into every sentence. The jury lapped it up. He walked free with a suspended sentence. Outside the court, his mates doused him in champagne. My dad lunged for him; the cops held him back.

Dad left the merchant navy to look after me, took a job digging roads. The work broke his back and spirit, but he never complained. At night, I’d hear him sob downstairs, Elvis’s Don’t Cry Daddy spinning on repeat. He couldn’t read or write, but he could love hard. One night he caught me watching and said,
“Son, it’s the Irish in me. We feel too deep sometimes.”

I grabbed his calloused hand. “I’ll make you both proud, Dad.”

Months later, we read that the posh bastard had overdosed in a Bangkok brothel. My dad smiled for the first time in years.

Then came the surprise trip. Southampton Docks. A ship. My first voyage at fourteen.
And her — Hannah — standing on deck, sunlight in her hair.

That night, chaos. The hull split open, alarms howling. Water flooded in. People screamed, clawing for lifeboats.
Dad dragged me to the one he’d checked earlier. The sea was black, vicious. I puked and shat myself in fear. Shame didn’t matter — survival did.

Hannah was helping an old man, calm amid the panic.
“Hold on,” she told him. “I’ll take care of you.”
Her voice cut through the storm.

Hours later, rescue. Fifty dead. We lived.
Her name stuck with me. So did her eyes.

Dad said, “We’re going back. Fear shouldn’t rule our lives.”
The papers called us the Belfast survivors.
Hannah saw the headline and booked the same ship.

A year later, back at sea, I spotted her again.
“Wanted to talk since that first trip,” I said.
Her smile steadied me.

Forty-five years on, I buried Dad at sea. Hannah and I toasted him and Mum on our yacht, waves lapping the hull.

Her grey hair brushed my cheek.
“They’re proud of you, Tony,” she whispered.

Tears filled my eyes. The night sky glittered above — a Van Gogh canvas of stars. Two souls, bound by tragedy, sailing through whatever comes next.

✴️ About Flash Fiction Friday
Every week I publish a short, sharp story rooted in truth, grit, and survival.
Real people. Real loss. Real love.

Read more on www.tommykennedyiv.com 
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