It’s that time of year again….Right around this time every year, right when we all hope it will get warm again, we at EWR kinda get a little goofy and come up with a contest. This year we are starting with fiction. We want your best 50 word story. That’s right 50 words. The story needs to have a beginning, middle, and end (follow plot and other story elements). We are looking for the best 50 words in any genre. These can be horror or science fiction or literary. It doesn’t matter. We are looking for the story that we think is best. The contest runs from now until June 14th 2014. That means you have a couple of months to come up with something good. We want these stories posted in the comments below. We will take the best of those stories and publish them on our 50 Word Story page. The best story will be published with a bio and links on EWR: Short Stories. The author will be the Winner of the EWR: 50 Word Story Prize, and that author will win 3 free months of advertising on EWR. We will give you a promotional package that includes a 300×300 ad in our sidebars and social network promotions (this is worth $900). So it is a pretty big prize if you are trying to get your literary magazine off the ground or you are trying to promote your book. So we want:
- 50 Word Short Story in the comments below.
- The story must be unpublished (on your personal blog or social network site is acceptable)
- The story must be posted before Midnight on June 14th 2014
We hope you win. Please start posting your best 50 word stories.
AFFAIR
Her friend understood. “These things happen”, she said gently. “Besides, you admitted to your husband that it was a terrible mistake.”
“He won’t forgive me.”, she cried brokenly.
“I’ll seduce him.”, her friend declared. “If you don’t object, that is. Just to prove a point. He’ll understand then.”
“You would go to such lengths? For me!”
“Yes. Anything for friendship.”
NASHVILLE CATS
Tom Cat tied to a cinderblock, then dropped into the Mississippi, rises like a phoenix reborn for life number ten.
Beer-belly up at Rocker‘s, I guzzle a harem of tall blond St. Pauli Girls until, eyes blood-shot, I nearly miss her saunter into the hazy olfactory funk.
This cat’s back.
“Then you dropped out?” she asked.
“Yes, but it was a big mistake,” he said.
“So why did you decide to become an English teacher?” she asked.
“Someone who has been blinded knows the value of light,” he said, thinking of the occupied desks and the turning of textbook pages.
DECEPTION
Wait…wow…that girl’s kind of…pretty. She has a nice face…whoops, dropped her bagel on the floor. Oooh cream cheese side down, that’s unfortunate. Oh, she’s picking it up? Five second rule, I guess. Uh-oh…um…oh no…there’s a…cigarette—aaand there it goes. She ate the cigarette butt. And—ohh kay. She’s convulsing. Nope.
No one was poorly prepared for a tough life than Tick was. The only son of his mother, Tick did not know who had fathered him, and he did not care less. He had only one desire: to have the local pastor falsely confess that he was his biological father.
A Canadian Love Story
I dreamed of syrup, a knothole bleeding, pulse like phantom pain, a limb removed. Then salt iron sawdust on the polished floor. Hardwood. One lost slipper kicked under the tangleweed linens and the 6:30 glow irritates the windchimes just enough to roll, reach across the shadeless half. My hand falls.
BUG FOOD
After the funeral, haul Dad’s boxes to the storage unit. You’re nearly finished when the manager starts in about insurance.
“It happens. Silverfish. Earwigs. Be mulch within a year. Bug food. Nothing like you remember.”
Remember the earth breaking open that afternoon, memorize what it took. Smile, say you’ll remember.
“Stairwell dinner!” the familiar text excited me. Elizabeth’s four kids didn’t know but if I was lucky, she would step into the stairwell just as I picked up the plate and kiss me. Eating upstairs, I would text my gratitude for a life abundant with a newly separated woman’s love.
Who Flung Poo?
The baboon charged and ran behind a tree. The chimps saw this and screeched in hysterical disapproval. Suddenly, a gorilla pounded its chest and a monkey swung down from an overhanging vine. An orangutan sucked a termite off a stick. The zookeeper laughed maniacally, rattling keys; separate cages my ass!
Wanderlust
Hurgot, King of all Gypsies, stood and spoke to the crowd. His impassioned speech lasted exactly fifteen hours, forty-two minutes and seventeen seconds. He raised his fist passionately. Jowels shook with vigor. Finally, he stopped and bowed with a flourish. The crowd had wandered on to the next town.
A light exists inside each person. The light cannot be seen by human eyes. It is a gateway to another world, the invisible dimension.
“…the invisible dimension?” you say.
Yes, that place from whence thoughts, feelings and dreams come from; and accessed only through an internal gateway, of invisible light.
She stood on the beach, her toes gritty with wet sand. The waves crashed, the gulls cried. The air smelled of salt and fish.
The ocean is life, the beating heart of the planet, her husband said.
She hugged the urn, unscrewed the cap. In the thunderous roar, he laughed.
Truth is Rough like Sandpaper
When she questions her fear
Her fear questions her back
Just like a sun decaying apple core
The fruit of an activity of
Meaning is an empty glass
What do you pour in a
Stained glass?
What do you breathe when
Someone you love doesn’t?
She has deactivated her Facebook account and removed him from her chat list. She would never like his nature photos and he would not like her recipes. Now she clicks nature photos and cooks her ‘best liked cuisine’ and has resolved the extramarital conflict by swearing to forever, forget him.
The cat hovered under the canopy of banyan tree. The squirrel gave high-pitched cries tweet-ta-tweet, to alert the birds and her mates about the cat’s arrival. She was relieved that all the inmates were alerted and then, the squirrel was lifted up and now was held by a hawk’s beak.
“What you say?”
“What will be the end?”
She leaned back into the chair, slowly lifted her arms over her head.
“I don’t know. You have to know the beginning to know that; I don’t remember the beginning.”
He looked out of the window, fixed his eyes on the blue sky.
She’d left him; she was not gone.
Suicide
Suicide always was tempting.
“Just close the eyes and never open them again,” he had advised.
So I closed my eyes; standing three hundred meters above the valley, trembling in anticipation.
“Let’s do this,” I whispered, and as I hurtled through the air, I screamed.
I had opened my eyes.
Dullish Ned
Hated witty Zed
Amorously Bed
Willing fillies, not yet Wed.
Ned Bred
Wealth and Wed
Lass not Bed
By Zed.
“Heed”, Ned Said
“Zed,
Leave Instead
Of becoming Dead.”
Zed thoughtfully Said
“Ned,
Give money, Bread
Instead.”
Ned
Gave Zed
Who Led
Ladies painting the next town Red.
SONNY SHINES BRIGHT
A new dawn ignited the garden. Sonny slowly rose from her bed. Her limbs stretched far and wide in the fiery sunlight. She would eventually wither and die from the Sun in the coming days, but she glowed bright knowing that her seeds would rise next year.
The bell
The bamboo Rumpelstiltskin is working for his new bike has dryish leaves that rustle like pale tones. As he grasps the culms in his right hand and goes as low as he can with the hawk-billed knife, working carefully and cutting cleanly, the dinner bell sounds. “Faye. Damn!”
“Don’t you know that YOGIS can stay hungry for days together and never need glasses? We get no myopia ….no hypermetropia and no health problems.”
The doctor stared and the Yogi urged,” I just want some vitamins and a pair of contact lenses to make this point to the devotees.”
Run, Cat, run. Run harder. Coyote’s almost got you in his mouth!
Run, Cat, run.
Jump the fence and into the shed. Run!
Big Dog wakes and stretches, and then he sees Coyote.
Coyote cries and yowls and jumps the fence.
Cat grins at Big Dog.
It’s their favorite game.
There was a party. Bright, loud, and everything she ever wanted.
There were innumerable hanging balloons,magnificently moist cakes, thoughtful gifts,and tubs of ice cream.
The joy was bursting, pounding, and radiating from her every pore.
These moments pass. Fleeting, drifting down old highways of memory.
They surprise her.
Johnny and his dad sat on the banks of Sunset Lake, intently baiting their hooks in the dawn light. “Dad, do you think grandpa knows we’re here?” Johnny asked.
“Ain’t got no proof,” Dad replied. “You just have to trust the sound of the bumblebees and the crickets at night.”
Mary’s back ached as she poured her 27th cup of coffee. But the weekend was in sight. She fantasized of soft slippers and a bath.
“These are for you,” Ralph, the floral delivery boy, said as he handed her the roses.
“Pick you up at 8,” it read.
Mary smiled.
The Big Truth
My Dad and I were walking out to the barn just before the sun came up. We were on our way to take care of our animals. I said, “Dad, what’s the one biggest difference between us and animals?” He stopped. “We know we will die someday.”
He watched her sleep.
When he was human, he’d never longed for anything this much.
She stirred. He froze.
“Where were you?” she whispered.
“I’m here,” he said.
“David’s dead.” Her voice faltered.
He nodded, leaned in and bit her throat. She tasted so much better than David ever had.
I’m walking. My phone rings. “Hey” I say, but wind creates noise in the speaker and the raindrops between us distort our voices. “I can’t hear you!” I scream. I hang up. Then I hold my hood tight over my head, lean my body against the wind and keep walking.
Push! The mid wife urged Mrs Bololo. Pacing along the corridor was Mr Bololo praying to his ancestors for relieve. They had eight soldiers already, an extra would be disastrous.
Congratulations, the mid wife interrupted, your wife delivered triplets: all boys.
And that was how Mr Bololo absconded from home.
Push! The mid wife urged Mrs Bololo.
Pacing along the corridor was Mr Bololo praying to his ancestors for relieve.
They had eight soldiers already, an extra would be disastrous.
Congratulation! the mid wife interrupted, your wife delivered triplets: all boys.
And that was how Mr Bololo absconded from home.
“They’d done locked me away in a loony bin.”
Grandma’s spry nimble fingers twisted the metal emery board. One screw, two screws, fall free onto the beige carpet. The window unit slid slightly cockeyed. Grandma paused, listened, began on a third.
Plop. Plop. Bang.
Grandma’s vanished.
Nursing home’s on alert.
Instantaneously he unleashed his black pen and started writing on her white sheets.
They had just met with a strong attraction like magnet.
She almost stopped him but he was fiercely fast.
Blinded with steaming tears she walked back home,
disappointed at losing her purity to someone she barely knew.
It was so unlikely of the Witch of the Underworld to keep her end of the bargain.
But this time she would, because she wanted so badly to pay for her sins. So she’d help him destroy the one person he despised the most.
For once, she’d keep her promise.
The Widow
Leaves wake up rustling to the festivity of evening breeze. Through the French window, already yellowed and murky, the sun withdraws, among the pile of pots and pans in the kitchen sink. The refrigerator throws long slanted shadow on the sideboard’s gloom.
And there sits the one who never laughs.
The Widow
Leaves wake up rustling to the festivity of evening breeze. Through the French window, already yellowed and murky, the sun withdraws among the pile of pots and pans in the kitchen sink. The refrigerator throws a long slanted shadow on the sideboard’s gloom.
And there sits the one who never laughs.
The room grew still as she made her way to Grandpa.
“You caused his death”, Grandma yelled.
Shaking like a jellyfish she walked on and knelt beside his sickbed, offering condolence
without a word.
If only she was more conscientious, Grandpa wouldn’t have died of expired drugs administered by her.
He could not listen to “Satelite of Love”. He knew they had to listen to the song when they had made love. Perhaps the first time. A slow kiss and blood flows freely, thought recedes. The pills were kicking in. No more senses. Done with perception, his mind closed. Good.
“Cock” Robin fought his image in a window every morning.
Once he brought his fiancée. As Ruthie Robin inspected possible nesting sites, she covertly watched him fight his mirrored foe. “You’re nuts,” she said. “I’m outta here.”
Next day he came alone. “It’s curtains for you, pal.”
The window survived.
“I have that urge to drink from the toilet,” Logan said, from the bathroom.
Chloe walked in and sat down on the floor, next to her formerly human boyfriend. She started flipping through the ancient book of spells. Canine Logan watched her anxiously. Several spells later, human Logan was back.
The Cycle
Jenny was the slutty girl in high school. Pouty lips, daddy issues, the whole nine. Her rolled kilt got her pulled aside by the nuns. Knocked up senior year, divorced at twenty-four. Now her Instagram is clogged with sultry selfies and baby pics.
I wonder when her daughter turns eighteen.
Lightning streaked across the sky. Distant rumbling.
A knife in my hands and blood on my shirt.
Growing up in the border town, never thought I would end up like this. See the city like this. Sirens wailed as justice came closer and closer.
I never did like her.
The snail
I could not breathe. I woke up. My face was in the puddle of cold rainwater. The puddle was inside dark and wet forest. I stood up. I checked my pockets. There was nothing but the hungry snail, licking my fingers. I realized I got robbed.
The Chauffeur
Sitting in a car parked outside McDonald’s, she’d been dead for days. Behind the wheel was her daughter, catatonic, but very much alive. A homicide reporter, I’d crossed the line to insanity long ago, relentlessly exposing other people’s misery to the world. This time, I chose sanity and walked away.
Unknown Zone
A mind is a terrible thing to waste. A collage of experiences consumes me with pinpoint acuity and precise chronology. A lifetime of trials and tribulations are at peace. The sheet is gently lifted over my head. Is this the beginning or the end of the journey?
She looked. He smiled. She froze.
It was him. She knew it. Did he realise?
Those eyes were hers. That smile her brother’s. How couldn’t he realise?
“You look familiar” – he approached. ‘I should do’ she thought.
“Are you my daughter Jessica’s friend?”
“No, I’m your daughter Alisha” she spat.
She’d never know how close she came, I thought to myself while dragging his blood soaked corpse across the lawn and into the shadows of the woods bordering her property. After pulling the chisel from his neck, I kicked his corpse into the grave, face down, and lackadaisically shoveled dirt.
The old farmer went into town to visit the old sage for her predictions. The sage told the farmer he would contribute to a lush bounty. Happy, he went back to work in his fields where he promptly died. No one found him. His body decayed in the field.
The Milky Way was closer then and all the neighbors were seeing Martians.
No one bothered to notice that Jimmy Lutz danced under the street lamp dressed only in a sheet, or that Minnie Mulder’s Mother Meg reproduced Picasso’s greatest works in legumes, pasta, and corn kernels. Ah, the 50s.
Enviously I pound the pavement.
While the cars drive by.
So I purchase a bicycle,
To speed up my travels.
Till a truck runs me
down. Bicycle dead on impact.
Bought a new, used car.
That ended up a lemon.
Made lemonade, to sip after
my stroll down fortitude lane.
Meditating before one of the ancient Wisdom Orbs, the acolyte basks in its eldritch emanations.
The night sky roils; moons careen asunder as dreams of the Great Catastrophe, the deaths of the gods, reverberate through her soul.
Eyelids flutter open; light flows from her eyes.
Her mind erupts with clarity.
The couple returned from the store with bags filled with groceries:
bread and cheese, a pink sliver of salmon, a carton of milk. As they
put the food away, the woman picked up the milk and frowned. It’s
expired, she said. So was everything else. Their love had gone sour.
Tears ran down her face as her fingers gently closed his eyes. Staggering to her feet she pulled the knife out of his chest. With a swipe, she cleaned it on his jeans and then tucked it in her garter. Composed, she made her way back to the wedding.
A long work night was behind him. It was sometimes hard for the nightshift to get sleep. Peering out from his worked old Buick, he saw the one fellow being who might understand. A blackbird was flying from the grey haze; lifting the night and seeking shelter of its own.
He said once, if anything, I’d collect lighthouses. I never asked why, I was too distracted by the way his eyes glowed when he said so. But, like the lighthouses I’d accumulated in our years together, I was sorted out in the “give away” pile. Cracked representations of longing.
Please, close the door.
I yearn for the silence.
The walls are so thin,
and everybody hears,
/everyone hears us.
I hate curiosity.
Please, close the door.
Turn the lock,
and come.
Do what you want,
kill me,
or keep me alive.
Pedro reached the gate of the Football Stadium four hours early. He arrived to collect fifty tickets from Bruno for the Brazil-Italy game. Bruno arrives on time, and as he hands over the tickets, he is shot at. Before dying, Bruno spills the beans on the black market ticket mafia.
Awake
I wake to hear children chirping and singing at their first spring recess. I remember my grown children, once fledglings too.
I hear the mockingbird sing, “Cheater, Cheater, Cheater.” I remember how my children loved to play X-men.
My God, What a long winter. I will separate the Irises today.
I sat by the side of the muddy fish-smelling river of my hometown, a cigarette between my chipped nail-polished fingers. Passion fruit was the color. I sipped endless cups of bad cappuccino until my mouth tasted like the inside of my heart, bitter, foul, tired. Tired without end.
Ancient Woman
Fool, but I gathered my sorrow
into my jeans pocket.
I know life is good because
the half moon emerging after a thunderstorm
told me so.
At 17, I wanted to mourn my father’s death
on my mother’s shoulder.
Instead, I became an orphan
and never looked back.
There is something romantic about drug addiction. An ephemeral chase through a dreamy sky. Life atop your personal Mountain, bleating out, “I am alive”. A coin flips. Black asphalt, mouth a-drip, drool puddling, a dull ache in the left temple. Life experiences between the edge and handle of a knife.
His body was very heavily saturated with drugs that caused him to hallucinate that his wife was dead. He went to the bridge over the freeway and jumped. A split second before he hit the ground, he saw her standing on the bridge, alive. Why was she smiling?
“Segregation to Desegregation – The Clinton Twelve Story”
No one speaks, each questioning what they’re doing and why. Eyes ahead, they march down Foley Hill. The walk, short in distance, is monumentally long. They’ve been walking this road since Reconstruction. Today’s journey? Another struggle for equality in an imbalanced world.
Heart-Broken
After 25 years, he has accepted that he will never understand her. In desperation, she glances his way; her tears imploring him. He can’t help her. She’s past his reach. Finally, “Why do you this to yourself?” Her response, “I can’t help it. The book is just so good.”
Heavyhearted, the widower sat, overladen with tears. Retentiveness for years past. Reaching for the mirror, reflecting there, twosome of amber eyes behind her does lie. Found within, sought so much, an genuine love. She stands, mirror crashing upon the floor. Side by side, holding hands, they enter the eternal lands.
When the insect awoke, he discovered that was a man. Puzzled, he lay his new head back down on the pillow, and for the first time in his life, wholly free of instinct, he pondered his circumstance… love, beauty, time, imagination, and of course, the inevitable knock at the door.
When the insect awoke, he discovered that he was a man. Puzzled, he lay his new head back down on the pillow, and for the first time in life, wholly free of instinct, he pondered his circumstance…love, beauty, time, imagination, and of course, the inevitable knock at the door.
She always gave me life and strength. My tears ran down over her photograph after I realise that you are no more. My life gave me a positive direction when I find a message on the frame that I’ll be there for you. Love you MOTHER.
Seating themselves, surrounded by clouds above the highest peaks where the chess board waited, Daniel recalled Bobby Fisher’s words, “You have to have the fighting spirit. You have to force moves and take chances.” The enemy executed his move, earth rumbled afire. But, Daniel’s move… caused merciful rain to fall.
My son died suddenly.
After religious services my daughter and I, in a chauffeured limousine shared tears about stories of my sons lifetime.
Arriving home, our driver, middle aged, from another culture, spoke with a solemn face, as he raised his and head and said, “Look up to the sky.”
Erin had never seen anything quite like them. She walked into the shop, reached into her purse, quickly counted just enough money to buy these china like creatures, and thought, “This would be a new start.”
Walking briskly home, something in the antique store caught her eye. Tears welled up.
Great Expectations
Raffles lay snugly within the confines of the lifeboat. A lifetime loser, he had finally beaten the guards, marshes, bloodhounds and in fact the system itself. Life would be much better in America – land of opportunity. The throbbing engines reassured him as the Titanic headed for open water
The ice cortege
They were young lovers when Jacques fell into a glacier, where it entered a natural crevice in Mount Maurillac. Sixty years later, his frozen body re-emerged. After a lifetime vigil, Anna, old and dying, rejoiced briefly in the aura of his embalmed youth. They were buried together.
Pray for the prey
A cold and misty night on the damp cobbled roads of gas lit London. Cilla, a plump young courtesan, turns in profile to study her faint image in a shop window on the deserted street. Too late she sees the large black silhouette behind her reflection
Short Back and Sides
A sudden commotion broke out in the courtyard outside, shattering the intimacy, peace and serenity of the moment. ‘What was that’ cried a startled Samson. ‘Don’t fret’ purred a seductive Delilah. I’ll go and sort things out just as soon as I finish cutting your hair
Betta Fish
Ishmael was lonely, so we bought Julie. She chased Ishmael round the sole plastic weed constantly. He was a wreck. We separated them. Two days later she jumped out of her bowl, flopped to the other side of the room, and died under the couch. I guess she loved him.
High in a tree, the camouflaged sniper waited, ready to defend against the powerful, spreading enemy. An approaching target whined overhead. Firing his long-range rifle, he brought down his sixteenth Amazon drone in a flutter of shredded paperbacks. Sorry, Mr. Bozo, Beavis, or whatever. Mom’s independent bookstore comes first.
Job
It is Dr. Cthulhu’s first day at Green Pastures.His family has left.He stares at me, then stretches the last of his self worth, “For a cup of coffee,I will put you in my will.”
I stare into his defeat, “I am in God’s Will,coffee is free.”
The wheels lower beneath the plane and my heart judders.
After thirty years, I am coming home.
The plane doors open to humid, jacaranda scented air.
I see them.
My mother, frail and bent. My father, smiling, arms raised to the sky.
Behind them, the uniformed guards, waiting for me.
Nobody likes me. To everyone I’m nobody. I’ve got no feelings nor heart. 5 years old: abandoned by my parents, 5-13 years old: bullied maximum amount, 13-18 nobody to care for me, 18+: a nobody. Life was ruined at 5 yrs old. No love. No heart. Nothing. Nothing at all.
Grounded in reality while falling from the sky.
Barreling toward great beauty, the everything of our very lives.
Freedom inspiring our everything.
To pull the string, you touch a life.
The handiwork of our existence, the product of our endearment.
The parachute never opened, but I didn’t want it to.
Perspective
Poets, pacifists, and pugilists are not very different. Inhabiting the same place in time within an infinitesimal vastness of ever expanding boundaries. Perspectives and reasoning from antiquity without resolve. Ageless questions with and without answers; for what, and what for? Is this a testament or blemish to our existence?
Martin stood in front of his favorite painting, Lady With a Fan, on the first floor of the Chrysler Museum. She would join his other art pieces stolen from the Archaeology Museum in Corinth: a marble bust of Julius Caesar, Eros, and the Ptolemaic god, Serapis. He really loved art.
Flame of the Heart
I shook the ashes from my hair and covered myself
with sack cloth.
She took the letters with my name and tore them apart,
ripping the dream from my heart.
Together we approached the pit; only then did I realize
that she would never know me.
I had a neighbor once who spoke Dutch.
“Hey, Gunnar,” I would yell, “say something in Dutch?”
“For the fiftieth time, my name is not Gunnar and I don’t speak Dutch!”
Such a shy guy. It’s a shame he didn’t stay long, our neighborhood could really use some diversity.
“kinko dildoa?” I asked incredulously.
“No, gingko biloba!” Mom laughed. “Write it down.”
“Can’t– I’m driving. Surely I can remember it for five minutes. Thanks. Bye.”
“Bye, hon.”
*************************************************************************
“May I help you, Miss?” the pharmacist asked.”
I froze. “Thanks. I’m just looking.”
Desperate, I called Mom. “Gringlo what?” I whispered.
The Whip
People expected marvelous results from the young genius’ experiment. After decades of work, he revealed a large whip that inflicted agonizing pain but couldn’t kill. He used it exclusively on himself, but it tortured others to watch.
“What an idiot!” most decided.
One old man spoke, “I’d whip myself too!”
“Pick up the rope.”
“Why? We don’t need it.”
“Just pick it up and bring it over here.”
“But why?”
“Because I want to hang you with it, you moron.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Rope. Here. Now.”
“Okay, here it is. Wait, what are you doing? Don’t jump.”
Rising
Losing your job in New York City is tough, but having nowhere to go is even worse.
I planned to kill myself that Tuesday morning, until the planes hit the towers.
If our city can find the strength to rebuild upon those grounds then I too can rise back up.
A quarryman pushed a stuck rock down a crusher; the rock caved in, smashing his right foot. He tied his belt around his thigh and amputated it at the knee with his knife. After a taxi ride, he hopped into a hospital’s emergency room, with his leg on his shoulder.
Today, I begin to live. Air into lungs, blood scarlet from oxygen, face flush with life. I cry to communicate, smile at nothing and eat to survive. For now, this is all I know. But learning will begin immediately because there is not much time. Tomorrow, I begin to die.
i watch my heart fall
(not without effort, no, i fought for it)
like a leaf falling from a tree
even Einstein could not defy gravity.
logic interrogated me
and i reasoned quite well
that i was taken out from a rib
bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh.
‘the hours are as snails,
yet the days go racing by;
the months have wings,
and the years are gone in a blink of an eye…’
i gulped my seventh cup of coffee.
‘you had a golden hair, lovely teeth. i wonder if you were real.’
“honey!!?”
‘no you weren’t.’
The train was slowing down. The wheels shrieked on the metal and the roar and grind came up through the floor with a continual vibration. Cold air blew in gusts through the half-opened window that had been jammed and could not be closed. He hoped she’d be waiting.
Tainted Youth
Mom filed for divorce today. Finally. Most kids want their parents to stay married, not me. Fuck that. If I have to sit through one more of those goddamned family dinners, watching their shitty stage performance, I’ll shoot myself in the fucking head. I’ve been done for years. It’s over.
Sylvia woke to another urine puddle on the carpet. Was this twelve now, she had lost count. The jet black cocker-spaniel Jake, had to go. Sylvia sneaked him out while the kids and her husband were away. Sure, they would be angry. She was the only one who hated Jake.
Taffeta in royal green clings to her breasts and crashes toward her olive high-heeled sandals in a high wave. By looking at her, nobody would guess what she sells. She is beyond reach, and it is the last time, anyway. She hopes. Again. She’ll get so naked, she’ll be untouchable.
Not my Shadow
Hi. I’m Dave. Whats that? Accused of murder? Yes, Yes. A knife they said. Don’t remember exactly. But had a good reason, a very good reason. The shadow you see. You don’t understand? The shadow, man! The shadow made me! It wasn’t my shadow.
The hunter; you get kicks from their fear, enjoy asserting your masculinity. Doe eyes lock with mine; mirroring my vulnerability, my defeat. You raise your gun but I find the trigger first. I smell your blood on my fingers, on my soul. Now she can run free, into the woods.
When his body hit the pavement, the only one watching was God. A note was in the kitchen, the sugar bowl over one corner to keep it from getting blown into the crack between the counter and stove, and the highway three blocks west hummed its constant tune.
[Sorry, folks, the previous one was the wrong version.]
When his body hit the pavement, the only one to see it was God. A note was in the kitchen, the sugar bowl on a corner to keep it from getting blown into the crack between the counter and stove, and the highway three blocks over hummed its constant tune.