Tag: grief

All Stories, Historical

White Horse by Kate Mole.

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Yesterday I walked another bit of the South-West Coast Path, from Praa Sands round to Marazion.  I was with a friend, who is aiming to complete the entire circuit of the path, from Minehead to Poole Harbour.  He does bits of it as and when he can, and invites people to accompany him if they live locally, or are keen walkers, or just feel like doing it with him.  This was a short section, only about six miles – well, short for him; about the right distance for me to walk comfortably. 

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Day the End of the World Was at Hand by J Bradley Minnick [1]

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“I’ve signed you up for swimming lessons at the Y.M.C.A. Lessons start Monday. That’s tomorrow,” Mother said as I stood on pretty pink petals that lined the ground of our backyard jungle. A late spring snow had just left the rooftop of our home. The gutters were filled with brown, wet leaves. Father stood high atop a wooden ladder. Looking up, I saw his blue jeans and the dirty soles of his shoes. Mother stood under him, holding the bottom rungs. She wore a small bee-hive hairdo, a plaid shirt, and black slacks. Every so often a clump of leaves exploded in a burst behind me. 

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All Stories, General Fiction

 Eulogy by Daniel R. Snyder

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(Editors’ note: Happy Easter to everyone.  And we thank Daniel for forgiving us (me) for misplacing his accepted story, which we are pleased to run today–LA)

The funeral is held in a large generation-spanning cemetery, with manicured lawns and polished granite headstones for the average, marble for the more-than-so, and pieces of nondescript rock hastily and carelessly inscribed for those who thought someone important enough for a marker, but not enough to break the bank.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Root Rot by Cailee Combs

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My family used to have roots connecting us, like the trees. We could speak to each other without a word mouthed aloud, sentiments flowing through invisible strings attaching us all. The roots vibrated with each family triumph and wilted during shared sorrows, singing silent songs between us as we went through life together. My older sister, Joan, used to say the roots were blessings.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

The Spoils by Toni Juliette Leonetti

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Themes that some readers may find distressing – see tabs

***

July 7, 1917, Arras, France

It was no great shock to hear of corpses rising from their graves.

Not in this toppled world, where men turned moles. Where the fresh aged fastest, stooped and wizened in their dark holes, dreading the sun. Where a man’s next breath might kill him before he smelled hay in it. Just that, no longer the searing pineapple and peppered bleach of chlorine. Phosgene suggested merely a whiff of musty hay before the man’s lungs drowned him. Drowned, with no water in sight.

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

Something from Montreal by Elizabeth Rosen

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Each morning my mother opens the door in her housecoat and slippers and draws the newspaper inside like a prisoner drawing his supper dish through the metal slot of his prison door. She lays the paper across my father’s plate so that it will be there when he comes down for breakfast, but she never slips the rubber band off the tightly rolled bundle.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Girl on a Trampoline by Christopher Ananias

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                                                                                                                                                                                                               Night falls black and starless. His eye is drawn to the cemetery. A chill runs through him. Young sees his breath in the porch light. He takes the air into account—the change. Things will have to be shut off soon and covered, other things will have to be turned on. He hears footsteps and the slamming of cabinet doors. Young thinks, are those snowflakes? I hope not. Trinity’s rusty black Chevy Cavalier has the trunk lid standing open.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Woman With Jigsaw Puzzle by Tom Bentley-Fisher

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“I am the Seven Wonders of the World … I am the Endless Ocean and the Garden of Eden … I am the Mountains and Valleys and a Great Desert.” 

Gabriella has a complex system for organizing the loose pieces. What might look like a haphazard pile of small cardboard shapes is a clearly thought-out symmetrical pattern waiting to be employed in a system of elimination “far too sophisticated for even the Venezuelan postal service to figure out”, she used to tell her little boy when they sat together day after day working on a new puzzle, waiting for him to die. “It’s like DNA,” she’d say, “every piece unique onto itself.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Night They Brought Him Home by Jake Bristow

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When they brought him home that night, the lid was strewn canted off the wooden lip and jacks and queens ornamented astray around the box like a ring of fire. Someone- I do not remember who- had loaded coal into the fireplace and after some poking it begun to lick its flame at the iron grate. Ma was cold and Paul and Jane huddled around the hearth for they were cold but I suppose not as cold as him. Still, it only felt right to keep him warm.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Dial 1 for Heaven by N J Delmas

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A red phone box stands alone in the middle of a field. Long grass and wildflowers surround it and little else. I make my way over; glad I’m wearing my wellies. I avoid the cow pats along the way and bat a couple of flies from my face.

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