Unpublished short fiction

So my parents settled in tiny, flat Gulfwind, Florida, a sleepy town a hundred years past its booming industrial peak. They said they liked the sleepiness and the community and the proximity to my dad’s employer. Then I was born with a dark cloud over my head—an eight pound, eight ounce baby boy with no job, no girlfriend, and no prospects for a life of importance in a sleepy town a hundred years too late. As a kid in a town with nothing for a kid to do—not even a hill—I stayed home and showered for hours, sometimes two or three times a day.
      “One day I’m going to come home and find a big pink raisin in the bathtub,” my mother said once.
      “There are worse things I could be,” I said. “A fish maybe.”
      “I’d rather have a nice fish than a raisin.”
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7,290 words