Broken Mirror Shard - Day 4

I only managed to write about fifteen minutes yesterday (not counting typing up what I'd notebooked and putting it here).  Big has gotten far ahead of me with his story.  But he says it's not a contest, just a game in which everybody who writes a story is a winner.

Which reminds me, here's a link to Big's blog, where he's writing a story called "Doctor Claw," and one to Bria Burton's blog, where she's writing one called "Little Angel Helper . . . Claw."
I also heard Algar Van Cluth was writing one called "Claude Ballz," but I have no link to that one.

***

            Stewart scoffed, but he had been nine once.  He remembered there being a claw game at the Toys R Us his uncle lived by, and that it looked so easy to win . . . until you actually tried.

            “Oh, man!” he heard Anthony shout across the store.  Stewart put a lid on his Mountain Dew, and walked toward the sound. 

            The claw game was called MagiClaw, and it was a big black glass box about three feet long and seven feet high.  This one was unique in that most of the glass had a black partition around it, so you couldn’t see inside.

            Stewart scowled.  Usually these things had an assortment of tempting prizes right there in view to get people to waste their money on them.  Not this one.  All that could be seen was the big mechanical claw, and a baseball sitting right on the edge of the trapdoor.  Stewart couldn’t help himself; he gave MagiClaw the finger.

            “Well, what you think?” Anthony asked proudly beside him.

            “I think you got yoursel—”  Then he looked at his brother.  The kid had a twenty dollar bill in his hand and was rubbing it between thumb and forefinger.  “What?” Stewart said.  He thought the boy didn’t have any money.  “Where’d you get that?”

            “I won it, Stewie,” the boy said, emphasizing the nickname.  Stewart hated that epithet more than Anthony hated ‘Annie.’

            “Bullshit.  You did not win that from the machine.”  He reached out quickly and snatched the bill from the seven year old’s hand.

            “Hey!  I’m telling Mom” Anthony protested.

            “Shaddup,” Stewart mumbled, and began to examine the twenty.  It looked brand new.  No way it could be real.

            “I’ll tell her you swore.”

            “Shut up’s not a swear, turd.  Mom’s not gonna care.”

            “Yeah, but you said shh.  Twice.”

            “Shit on that,” Stewart said with a smile.  “I said it three times.”

Word Count: 316
Total Count: 1759