Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, and I make no profit from this fan-written fiction.
Author's Note: This won't make much sense unless you've seen the UK anti-smoking advert ‘Scared’.

PG. Gen. Becki Taylor. 181 words.

Scared: shallowness

Becki Taylor is scared. She's scared that someday someone will find her out. She's scared of clowns. What she says out loud is that it's bang out of order when a group man puts on make up like that to muck about with kids. But even before she knew about kiddy-fiddlers, just seeing one, maybe at a party or maybe at a carnival, made her sick and shuddery. She pretended that it was something she ate.

Becki Taylor is scared of a lot of things underneath all that front. She's scared of what happens when Mike comes home drunk, she's scared of hospitals – the doctors and social workers inside. She's scared of the other kids catching on. They haven't yet, but they might.

She keeps her hands steady as she lights the fag from the pack she ‘talked’ Kayleigh Miller into buying for her. She takes a draft – it's a long time since she's coughed – and keeps an eye on the alley behind Clackton Road. She doesn't think she's going to see a clown, ’course, but you never know what's coming.

Fin.

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