“Hey babe, what tie should I wear with this shirt?” I asked, draping a solid pink tie and then a diagonal-striped black and blue one from the collar of my black dress shirt.
Tag: fiction
The Bracelet by David Henson
I probably shouldn’t be doing this, but can’t think of a good reason not to. Maybe it’s true what my parents say about a teenager’s frontal lobe or cortex or whatever not being fully developed. Anyway, I’ll be back before they’re home. I slip the bracelet over my hand and slide the switch to Future.
Week 79 – Memory, Repetition And Brigadoon.
I have come across a problem that I think we all have at some time whilst writing. I am thinking on things and then doubting if I have mentioned them before. Yep that old problem of a crap memory causing repetition. Anyone who has written more than a dozen bits and pieces begins to wonder if they have used the same phrases, the same topics, ideas, thoughts and feelings. It is hair pulling time as you need to look back. This is the writers equivalent of being drunk and repeating yourself. How many times after a few sherbets do we need to say, ‘Of course sweetheart, I know that I have already told you that, but I am just emphasising the point…Oh and did I repeat the fact that I love you?’ To which a curt ‘No!’ is the normal reply. Being drunk and reading has one advantage, you can read the paper at least three times with no penetration. When I was younger I could remember everything that I had done the previous night on the sauce, now not so much. I have forgotten conversations, visitors and my identity. I have woken up some mornings and had to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to myself to get my name. I now need to look in the kitchen to see if I ate supper. I have on occasion woken up to thinking I had some form of deformity growing on my face only to find that it was a midnight attack of the munchies and an inability to find my mouth for a toffee. This memory constipation is the same when writing, you begin to repeat and doubt and think that you have said it all before. Nine times out of ten, you have! This is why I admire the multiple authors so much. (I know that is repetition, I have mentioned that before and am emphasizing the point!!) Sure you can find some common themes but for someone to write multiple stories and for them to keep their ideas fresh is some talent. This wee weekly posting is a bit easier, I normally find something throughout the week to kick-start an idea. Hence this weeks thoughts on memory being the inspiration.
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Borrowed Fragments by Vince Barry
“. . . ?”
How can you help? Hmm, how can you—
“. . . ?”
My mother? . . . Okay, we can start there. . . . My mother—my mother came from a large family, a very large Irish Catholic family. Do they make them any more? I think not. . . . At any rate, as a boy, a young boy, no more than eight or nine, I would employ the template of the Baltimore Catechism to sort them out and keep them straight—the Faheys I mean . . .The catechism’s set formula, y’see, helped me convey the essential and fundamental content of the Fahey family. Beginning—
They Who Were Wordless by Piyali Mukherjee
Ku was named with a rare consonant and the last vowel her wordless family had to spare and she had fallen on desperate times indeed. The Qxlb recruited Ku when they discovered that she sold slang on the black-market, desperately moving from alphabet to alphabet to feed herself. Ku had always considered them her last resort, and now that she had succumbed to it, she felt her end very near. The Qxlb chose their unpronounceable names from scraping the remnants of burned lexicons on the streets, an act which endeared them to the wordless majority. They made bold claims to restore the depleting vocabulary and often acted on them, using methods that Ku could neither accept because of their extremity nor reject because of their results. The government could not capture or describe that which they could not name, which served the Qxlb’s purposes quite well.
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Crimson Memory By Marie McCloskey
Her legs began to go numb as they tingled from her weight. She was on her knees again, scrubbing. Always scrubbing. The chill of the linoleum floor made goosebumps run over her thighs under her pants.
This home didn’t belong to her. She wouldn’t enjoy the benefits of her labors. Mrs. McCormick, or Mrs. Glenn, or Mrs. Whomever Ella worked for that day would come home after she left. All part of the job, you show up, clean, and leave.
Week 78 – Polls, Slim Whitman And Sloths.
I only hope that we can go a few months without looking at the weeks events with sadness. More tragedy in Orlando with two horrific incidents. Our thoughts are with all involved.
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Eleanor by Steve Carr
There near the edge of a cliff overlooking a broad open area of grassland outside the town of Wall, South Dakota stands Eleanor’s house. It is a huge wooden structure built in the 1940s and one of the few houses built along the ridge looking toward the Badlands and along the road leading from Wall to the Badlands National Park. It is a weather beaten house, with the remnants of the bright white paint that covered it peeling from the weather-worn wood, and a single slightly tilted chimney of red brick sticking up at mid-roof. There is a wrap around porch, the back of which I was told offers an amazing view of the pink, the beige and purple layers of the Badlands formations miles away, and the ability to see antelope, coyotes and even a few buffalo that roam freely through the tall prairie grass below in summer and a blanket of drifting snow in winter. In the front of the house, leading from the porch to the gravel path that leads from the driveway to the house is a ramp that was built to accommodate Eleanor’s husband who had, later in his years, become unable to navigate the stairs.
Crawfish Prayers by G.A. Shepard
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.
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.
literally stories 