He wakes with a start. The mug is there as always but the message this morning reads like some terrible urban legend.
Your wife is dead it says.
Tag: life
Squirrel by David Henson
Squirrel was a little under average tall and railly. Mostly crooked teeth. Reddish hair, oily. Everbody started calling him Squirrel back in high school. He didn’t mind so much. Better’n Twerp from earlier on. One night Squirrel goes to the Tap Bar, and Big Ed’s wife, Ellie Lynn, is there without Big Ed. Ellie Lynn looks like she’s had a few so Squirrel goes an sits by her. Ellie Lynn seems real happy for Squirrel to buy her a few, and he has a few himself. Well, to cut to it, Squirrel and Ellie Lynn end up closin the place and goin to his truck to get at it. After finishin, Squirrel says to Ellie Lynn “Let’s do this again sometime, wanna?” Ellie Lynn don’t say nothin. She just gets outta Squirrel’s truck and walks off laughin and pullin up her pants.
The Cave by Diane M Dickson
It was darker now, he wouldn’t have believed it possible. It was, deep, impenetrable and velvet. For the first time Tom was afraid. When the others had suggested the trip it sounded like fun. A chance to explore the newly discovered pothole, to be the first and so have their names in the journals as the original team opening up a new cavern, shining light on the newly opened place. He wasn’t very experienced and found the roping complicated, he had done it wrong and it had stuck twice on the trial run, the rope catching in the pulley but they told him it would be fine. He knew that they were finding him irritating, they were all so much more experienced but hey, that wasn’t his fault. Anyway in the end it hadn’t been fine, it had let him down and as he began to slide into the smaller cavern, pushing and slithering on the loose gravel at the head the damned thing had failed tossing him end over end into this pit.
Atreus (Arthur) and Thyestes (Theo) by Frederick K. Foote
Fraternal twin brothers from an exemplary family with a long history of silver spoons, silk stockings, white gloves, and blueblood.
Arthur, the elder by minutes, born to ponder, plan, plot and practice minor deceits for major gains and elaborate scams for minimal returns or momentous losses.
Theo of the laughing lips and smiling eyes, a charming and pliable character and a lubricous seducer of young girls and married women. The younger brother, a slippery wordsmith, giving every word a double or triple meaning. His promises are rarely broken because they are seldom understood.
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Beau Geste Murtaugh, Veteran of Wars by Tom Sheehan
“Here I am,” says his imperative argument in an undertone, “eighty-seven frigging years old, my knees gone to hell and back, my gut talking about all the beer I’ve sailed my life across, barrels of it talking to me all at once, and this little kid out in front of my house crying his head off. This little kid, this little shaver, one of the ones we did our thing for, our future.
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Brake Lights by C. W. Bigelow
“He’d been a philanderer for years.”
Those words spilling out slowly from my mother’s mouth, chin firm, lips straight, not a tear in her eye, about my father who had just died – came as a total surprise – especially when there was no chance to verify her accusation. He was gone, unable to defend himself. So as his son, I wasn’t sure to take the announcement as total truth or as someone’s bruised opinion?
The Discovery of Death by Fred Skolnik
Dick and Jane and Bob and Sally lived in a pretty little town with grass and trees. One day Bob was gone, leaving his body behind. Dick said to Sally, “Where is Bob?” Sally said to Dick, “Bob is gone.” They looked at Bob’s body, poking it with a stick. It did not move. He was not there.
Meanwhile, Back at the UPIFFC… by Leila Allison
Prologue: A case of the heebie-jeebies.
In a determined effort to spread inefficiency and uselessness throughout all possible universes, the Amalgamated Union of Pennames and Imaginary Friends(of which I am a reluctant member) has expanded like a toxic spill, and now includes the clientele of the recently defunct Guild of Fictional Characters. The mess has been “rebranded” the UPIFFC.
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A Life, Passed On by Louis Hunter
I
Every house has this book tucked away somewhere, father tells me. Some keep it locked in the attic, while others hide it in the depths of bookcases or submerged under dusty bowls in forgotten boxes. My father, however, makes a point of reading it to us. Just as he has read it to my brothers and sisters, so he will read it to me. It’s an old leather bound book and inside is written my whole life.
Knickers on the Loose by Tom Sheehan
Jackie Cushing was fighting it all the way, wearing knickers, him, twelve going on thirty it felt some days, dreams about Ginnie Grayson practically every night now, the morning dew being the vague remnants his father spoke about with a smile on his face, new hairs in his crotch, his mother wanting her boy to look neat, his father looking at the horizon almost saying aloud this too will pass. It was his one-shoulder shrug that carried verb and noun in its arsenal. Jackie had early discovered that his father did not need a lot of words.
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