Excerpt from "Et Tu Brutal"

Just finished a draft of a new short-short, part of a collection I'm toying with making, titled "Et Tu Brutal." I asked my FB friends for a good nonexistent band name, which could be the title of a new story. This is a version of an exercise from the Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, in which you think of the title first and make it into a piece of flash. Much can be done with titles in flash writing. Such as the below, which is thanks to Katherine Quinn (which was in fact the first of about 25 decent suggestions.) This title inspired me to think about the Latin roots of words, and how a story might be built around the etymology (which is like the story of a word, yes?) I ended up structuring it around the Latin roots for the words punish, desire, fragile, contusion, and of course brutal. I was also inspired by the somewhat corny film, Thirteen, directed by Catherine Hardwicke. If you've seen it, you might recognize this opening.

Et Tu Brutal

pūnīre akin to poena: penalty, pain

Sammie and I were studying vocab, but I kept thinking about how the Latin roots, which the teacher said would help us remember, can be so misleading. Like paradox comes from Latin for “beyond belief” but you can believe a paradox easy. And profane just means “outside the temple,” and discord means “the heart asunder.” Sammie was being a grouch, more than usual even, throwing my lighter at me after I was nice and gave her one of my squares. She finally told me that Brittney Phillips spread a rumor that Sammie was fingering herself in the bathroom stall at school, when really she was just putting in a tampon. I smiled in a dirty way, and that made her even saltier. So she slapped me hard across the cheek, and The Game was on.