Tommy lay in the middle of the train tracks looking down between the railroad ties. It was fifty-feet to the shallow river that ran underneath the trestle. A low growl made the wood and metal shudder.
Tag: family
Reflections Aft by Tom Sheehan
Eight years locked in bed by an accident, his wife’s life an obscene penalty, Peirce Keating was left with only imagination. And little hope, though today might prove different. He loved his wife May, the sea, and bright company. Old pal Gary Mitman was this day’s gift, this day where hope might gain one foothold. That and viewing mirrors he controlled by head movements.
God’s Secret Name By Leila Allison
“Fran,” Beth says, “do you know that tall people do not live as long as short people? It’s a scientific fact, and most likely why basketball has never caught on in Okinawa.”
A Thin Blue Line by Anne M Weyer
Have you ever read the future in a thin blue line, as you wait in the handicapped stall in the fourth floor bathroom? Your stretched out knees have made a run in your pantyhose, which are cheap and rough and aggressively tight, so you slide out of your worn kitten heels and tug them off to pass the time. Balling them up and stuffing them into the little maxi-pad trashcan uses up about twenty seconds. Pregnancy test seconds, as any woman in the know will tell you, pass even more slowly than microwave seconds. Whether you are bound to be relieved or disappointed or tremulously hopeful and filled with joy, the waiting is the hardest part. Once you know, you know. You can confront that emphatic little mark and all its implications head on. When you know, you have options. “Options,” you whisper to yourself, hoisting up your skirt with the grooved thumb-grip clamped between your teeth.
Plumbeck the Fiddler by Tom Sheehan
Watching every move about the campfire, studying each face lit up by the flickering flames, the fiddler Sam Plumbeck idly held onto his instrument, waiting for the proper moment. Time, he could feel, was pressing down on him; it had different parts that moved in different ways. The stars all the way to the horizon dip were many and miraculous, the horses silent for the most part even though a coyote cry filtered in now and then, and the darkness beyond wrapped them like a giant robe spread under those stars. He had ridden in, apparently aimlessly to all the trail hands, and joined up with them on their way back to their ranch, the promise of music being hailed by all the hands who had delivered the herd, were through with the drive. He alone, out of all these trail hands who had hit the jackpot, knew what was coming down on them. Nothing is supposed to be perfect or fair; at least this side of heaven, or the mass of a blue sky, or the dash of sunlight on a rainy day. And he, just a picker of strings, with not a coin of the gold in the lot having his name on it, could only wait it all out, hoping for the best and only seeing the worst coming up.
Hail Caesar! by David Louden
I had been at University six months when I got the call to tell me my old school friend Eamon Donovan had died. Drug overdose. He wasn’t the partying kind; it was a different kind of drug overdose. An entirely intentional one. Eamon was from the north of the city, like me; The Bone. That particular stretch of hopeless home-front had given rise to a nasty habit of suicide. In the years I had been out of my working class no-man’s-land I’d stopped counting the amount of associates who had taken the off-ramp. It had become so frequent that it had been dubbed the North Belfast Green Card.
Sleep by Cameron VanderWerf
By dusk, he could feel the coming of another sleepless night, so after Helen left for her book club meeting—stooping from the weight of the pregnancy—he left a note on the kitchen counter and walked out the front door. It was a beautiful evening, and maybe that was why he didn’t feel like sleeping. The dying light in the west cast a rusted glow from the horizon, and the air was warm and slow. The only traffic on the road in front of his house was a beat-up brown station wagon gliding past. He watched it disappear up the road, no trees to block his view.
Imaginary Friends by Julianne Carew
Auburn hair and freckles sprinkled across his face, a red hat that he was never without and grubby sneakers that were ripped and torn, I first met Alvin when I was say, three or four. Alvin simply emerged in the middle of the grocery store parking lot that was really a sandbox that only I could see. He tapped on my shoulder as my mom was loading bags into the backseat of the car and from that moment on, from the second I laid eyes on his crooked teeth and goofy half-smile, we were inseparable.
Dead Man’s Last Home by Michael Glazner
6:47
Clint’s sleeping body takes a breath, stretches and rolls over. The large man wearing a white coat scribbles notes on his pad while the dim sunrise light peeks through the window. Clint’s body rolls back to its original position. The white coat checks his watch and then checks off a box on his notepad.
Falling Stars by James McEwan
Dressed in mourning suits, they listened to the minister as he read out the eulogy. My name is Benjamin Carmichael and at fifty-two years old this was my funeral. To me, it seemed surreal as if floating around in a euphoric haze viewing my coffin draped in the clan tartan shawl and adorned with white lilies. Peeping through a small gap I could see the faces of the congregation and by their demure I sensed an impatient acceptance. Were they saddened by the tale of a tragic loss as imposed on them by the monotonous voice of the minister or were they merely bored by the ritual? Surely, this was the day they had been expecting for years and eventually their long suffering would be over. Soon, the body would be cremated to ash and the soul free to flutter heavenly in a plume of white smoke, and they will be able to continue their lives free from guilty retributions.
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