Tag: end of life

All Stories, General Fiction

The Sun Rose in the West by Stephen J Kimber

literallystories2014

The sun rose in the west and coloured the hills. Velvet dark, not quite black… Then burnt umber. Orange-red, limpid platinum. Light gathering.

The hills became distinct; hard, dry mounds the sun reached from, taking hold of the day, making it hard and brittle too.

A party of men came back into the landscape, carrying something wrapped in canvas. They stopped at a freshly dug hole. They laid the canvas bundle down, not too gently, and unwrapped it.

It was a corpse, bones really, hard white chalky bones, dead a fair while. These the men put into the hole, one or two at a time. Then, using shovels and a mattock, they refilled the hole. It looked hard work. The last blows were struck with the mattock by the smallest, oldest man – an Aborigine – and the other men stood about, talking. They were white men.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Still Here by Melanie Haws

literallystories2014

Wipe off my chin. Please. There is a handkerchief in my pocket. That’s the way I was raised. Get it out and wipe the drool off. Now. And look at me when you talk to me, the way you used to, when we were first married. I’m still here, you know, I’m still here. The older the violin, the sweeter the music. My mother fiddled. I remember the feel of her gloved hand in mine one afternoon, walking me down Market Street, when she stopped and gasped, There’s your daddy. I looked across the street at the man watching us, and he didn’t seem at all a father to me. Only another guy on the street. I squeezed my mother’s hand and we walked quickly in the other direction. I did not look back. I was eight then. I cannot remember the sound of my mother’s voice, or when she passed, but I know that she is gone.

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