Tag: love

All Stories, General Fiction

February by Nik Eveleigh

Nik

Some days bring sunshine. Some bring rain. And somewhere along the line life settles in hard as a February sky. Locks down your dreams tight against the iron earth and dares you to object. For such a short month it exacts a long toll.

A bunch of scientists did an experiment once with fleas. They took half a dozen of the brightest and bounciest, dropped them in a jar and screwed on the lid. For a couple of days those fleas launched themselves into almost continually. Eventually, through pain or weariness or both, they stopped jumping so high. They settled on a spot two thirds of the way up the sides of the jar and that was their limit. Even after the lid came off and they could have bounded their way to freedom those fleas kept right on jumping to a place well below the potential of possibility.

Maybe I’m being melodramatic but if that leaden February sky ever clears I wonder how high I can still jump.

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All Stories, General Fiction

It’s My Funeral!by Paulene Turner

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Oh man! That was the Mother of all nights out. What a headache! I can’t remember much about it. Must have been a great night!

But, where am I? In a place with dark carpets, velvety wall paper, fussy gold mirrors. Some woman’s house, I suppose. A sexy babe who whisked me back to her place for a night cap and a game of Hide-the-Sausage. Was it the surfer chick from Bondi in the barely-there bikini? Talk about hot. And the way she rode those waves. I’d better find a mirror to see how bad I look and whether I need a shower. Don’t you hate it when the girl gets her first peek at you in daylight and throws up?

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All Stories, General Fiction

Totality by A. Elizabeth Herting

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The entire world had gone mad. Completely bat-shit crazy which was really saying something in this over-sexed, social-media crazed, smartphone obsessed cesspool that made up modern life. Douglas Garuder had long been a man whose time had passed him by. Hell, he still had an ancient flip phone with a long, spidery crack up the screen. Not that he ever used it. Since Joan had passed away some five years ago, there really wasn’t anyone he cared to talk to. Most of the time if he even remembered to look at the damn thing, he always expected her to call, reminding him to pick up eggs or some other mundane item at the grocery store. That feeling was always followed by the crushing, black sadness that he would never hear his wife’s voice again. At least not in this life anyway.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Thirteen by Rebecca Young

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Your first kiss wants to play make-believe. You be the wife and I’ll be the husband, he says during recess. You’re in 3rd grade and love make-believe. He kisses you on the cheek and asks what’s for dinner. You will be whoever he wants you to be.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction, Writing

Four Bars by Hugh Cron – Adult Content

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There was always a queue to get in, too many drinks in an easy pub before hand and you were in trouble. You had twenty stairs to practise your date of birth. Even at the bottom of them you could hear ‘You Spin Me Right Round.’

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All Stories, General Fiction

He Died by A. Elizabeth Herting

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Bob Herting.jpg

He Died

He died on a Friday.

The July heat was already pouring in through the weathered old screen as he perished quietly in his slumber. He’d always insisted upon the open window, even on the very coldest of nights. His wife would wrap herself in layers and layers of electric blankets in those days when they still shared the same room, time and circumstances causing them to slowly drift apart in their sleep.

Thirty-nine years as husband and wife. Decades of laughter and illness, heartbreak, and euphoria gone in the span of a single heartbeat. She would never know what did him in, only that he slept. She found him there in the first blush of morning, leaving the room before turning back and placing her hand gently on the bedroom door. The new day opened up all around her, petals on a withered flower, as she realized they would never see their fortieth year together.  Continue reading “He Died by A. Elizabeth Herting” →

All Stories, General Fiction

Dave by Hugh Cron – Very Strong Language

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As he drove past the wall, he didn’t look at the flowers. People were still laying them on the indent. He hadn’t.

His mind was flooded with memories, he tried to choose some from others but failed.

Lewis wondered how many people ended up under a mile from where they ended.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Long Second Chance By JC Freeman

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21 June 1943

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Emma Wick had been beautiful for life. Even at seventy-four she had retained her figure and carried herself with the grace and confidence of someone much younger. For nearly half her time, however, there had been an icy quality about the lady. The few persons who knew her attributed this remoteness to the closely occurring losses of her daughter and husband, many years before. Only Emma knew the truth. She had lost her Mary, who had lived just five years—to a bad case of it having been 1906, more than anything else; but she was the reason why her husband, Robert, lay in his grave since 1907–which was a circumstance that she had never considered anything more than addition through subtraction.

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