Rita Sajevic lost her mind on home plate at 5:15 pm, two days after dual interviews at competing churches. She’d work the night shift cleaning 11 blocks from home. All this was in shorthand on her palm faded by cherry red ink. On her other palm was a tattoo of a fetus whose life ended tragically. After Rita relived the event, outside of confession mind you, I swore to several saints never to retell that story to anyone.
Magnificently justified, she teeters on the parapet of her limestone tower. The herd lows below, and in the autumn air all stands still except for Tom, who has spied her from a distance and now is racing to her rescue. Her foot shifts and slips a bit, sending down a pebble cascade, but her heart is strong, and she refuses to be petrified. She stares straight ahead at the hillside, where leaves fall from their trees, drifting, dropping, like children’s valentines into makeshift paper-bag mailboxes taped to her classroom wall many years before. Cards of teddy bears with hearts, Hello Kitty with hearts, blooming flowers with hearts, circus lions proclaiming, “You’re purr-fect!” Suppressing squeals, children scurry. Others’ bags fill up. In hers, not one. Eyes anchored on the hillside, all she sees is disregard. That and the teacher frowning with pity for poor Samantha San Gabriel, so shy and so odd.
He looked around. It was dark but there were a few lights on the bridge. He stood in the middle and peered over the side, down into the water. The night was still and the smell of the trees and moss made him smile. The countryside always had that effect on him, this was as good a place as any.
Continue reading “Nature And Nurture – The Devil’s Mix by Hugh Cron – Adult Content.”
Another suggested blast from the past by Leila Allison. Again she has chosen a regular to the site and this is what she said:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – When Planets Miss by Doug Hawley”
“This has got to be the sorriest sight I have ever witnessed in my long and storied military career!”
It was a Monday morning. A village hen clucked at the assembly, looking for its youngling. The school principal, Mister Rakobo, went off with the hen, leaving the assembly divided into several assemblies. The Mocking Birds choral conductor raised a hand, calming the sopranos and tenors that were going this way and that. “Whose mother is that?” inquired some. “Someone must have stolen money or something,” speculated some. “A family death? A bullying case?” Some concluded that this was not the case.
He accepted the night. He always had. The street people never caused him any fear. It was a case of if he didn’t bother them, they wouldn’t bother him. The unapproachable demeanour which he carried also helped.
Ms Allison has revisited an old story by one of the site’s most prolific writers and we think it’s wonderful to see this having a new crack of the whip. Swan River Daisy is the story that she has pulled from the dusty archives and this is what she said.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Swan River Daisy by Tom Sheehan”
“The planning of a new chair can take much longer than the actual construction,” Shinji said as he laid out his sketches. “No other kind of furniture has a purer function.”
Around the table stood three rows of sixteen year-olds dressed like old men in once-white shirts with the school crest on the pocket, ill-fitted black trousers with frayed hems, and green sandals. They jostled and pushed and muttered insults at one another.
literally stories 