Are you over eighteen?
Yes.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. Gerard sips his coconut milk coffee, then places it back on the mint green saucer. At least that’s what I imagine him doing whilst he’s typing away to me on his phone. I picture him trying to hide what he’s doing from his wife and kids as they sit around the sofa together watching a family movie. I picture him feeling embarrassed and adrenalized all at the same time You just look young in your profile.
1.
After my wife died, I volunteered on a crisis line. “You must keep clear limits with callers,” said Marilyn the training coordinator. “Don’t under any circumstances interact with anyone in person.”
I didn’t tell her that my boundaries were non-existent. That’s why I lived mostly alone.
Sadie puts a bottle of white wine in the fridge before she goes out for a long run. She figures that if the run doesn’t help purge her of the toxins from the day then maybe the wine will. And if that doesn’t work she always has that fifth of bourbon on the bookshelf that girl from work gave her for Secret Santa, red bow taped to the top, and a few oxy left over from her thumb surgery last summer stashed at the bottom of the clothes hamper. But she figures the run, or the wine, should do just fine.
It was Nelda’s virgin adventure in ordering from East, a website with ridiculously low prices on electronics. All the goods were from China and took weeks or months to arrive. Reviews of East noted that each order was a surprise package ranging in quality and value from outstanding to profoundly disappointing. The reports also stated that returns were not practical, and that technical help was nonexistent.
Well here we are at week 275.
I’ve written quite a few short stories but I think I’ve only ever written one about a serial killer.
I didn’t really go into any technicalities, it was all about the aftermath.
Something happened this week that shows me that I’m not suited to do the type of research that is needed.
Continue reading “Week 275 – Deviant Pastimes, Hellish Duets And RIP Lentil The Cat.”
“Guess who’s sitting in front of me right now?”
My wife Beth was calling from work, from the nursing home where she’s been a hospice nurse and head of an Alzheimer’s ward for a number of years. She is without doubt the most compassionate woman I have ever known. While the dignity of patients come first with her and as much pain-free existence as she can possibly imagine for them, coming towards the end in most cases, she can nevertheless get rocked by hard associations. It is her curse in life, but, of all the women I have met, she is best equipped for this task.
In her mind she kept repeating, ‘It’s something to share, it’s something to share…’
Gina didn’t let the whisper of guilt niggle at her. She’d been thinking on this for a few years but her conscience screamed, not any more.
Continue reading “Gina And Gary by Hugh Cron – Warning Adult Content.”
But First, More Prefatory Gibberish by Miss Stoker-Belle
As any intelligent person can see, I do not control what is said about me in the bold-face heading. In a rare moment of forgetfulness, I had overlooked demanding approval of the heading’s content upon graciously consenting to present the Feeble Fable introductions. This tiny oversight forces me to spend the first paragraph or two of my introductions refuting the bold-faced insults laid on me by my employer, the semi-sentient, Ms. Allison.
Lost and found.
That’s where Kathleen would go if this had happened at a big box store, her carelessness broadcast over the loudspeaker. Instead, she lost something precious in the snow, in deep, cold, silent snow. Beautiful, but impossible to search — unlike the hard floors and ordered aisles of housewares and sports equipment, toiletries and toys.
The cold, not a storm loaded with snow, but the cold in burrowing waves, came sweeping down the valley just north of the Yalu River. Vatcher Sexton McKee, sergeant of infantry, as cold as he’d ever been in his life, could not hold the pencil in his hand. He’d already broken the lead point three times, but only worried about handling the rifle, managing the trigger when called upon, his latest letter home to be finished at an hour less demanding.
literally stories 