Each year the SCWC*LA holds a writing contest in which all conferees are invited to participate. The rules are simple: Write a piece in any form you wish of no more than 250 words based on the topic announced Friday night. The topic for the 10th annual L.A. conference was “Cat” (or “Kitty” or some familiar, ribald synonym). Krysten Nunn of Fresno, CA is the writer of one of this year’s winning entry.
Kitty
by
Krysten Nunn
“Kitty is a stripper name,” my father told me on my eleventh birthday, three weeks after my mom died. “Your mother was a whore and knew better than to imagine anything bigger for you, either. That’s the only reason she called you that.”
It was the first year my cake said Happy Birthday Katherine, the only year he remembered my birthday and the last year he let anyone call me Kitty.
He finally succeeded in drinking himself to death and I got to cross Bury Dad without Going to Jail off my bucket list.
The paper ran his obituary yesterday. I gave them a picture of a donkey and approved the copy to read:
Samuel Arthur Harris was a worthless son of a bitch. He put everyone who knew him out of their misery on January 17, 2012 when he died from cirrhosis of the liver. He was 65. His death was not only expected, it was highly anticipated. He had no soul and probably didn’t go to a better place. He was preceded in death by his beautiful wife, Eileen, who he was never good enough for. He is survived by his only daughter, Kitty, and his three amazing granddaughters, Bambi, Mandy and Daisy, who never had the misfortune of meeting him. There will be no funeral service. The remnants of his sad and lonely life will be auctioned off on January 30th and all proceeds will go to the Eileen Harris Foundation for Battered Women and Children.
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