Tag: marriage

All Stories, General Fiction

The Whole Me, the Whole She, the Whole Nine Yards by Antony Osgood

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For an ugly man making minimum wage in his thirties – okay, then, mid-twenties – it is a hard life – for a man who could do with a change of apron, you’re full of mucky questions. Rather than stare at me and pepper my face with questions, you could be busy changing blown bulbs, or turn up the café’s heating, maybe put the clock right, or making a decent cup of coffee. Maybe you’re simply the curious kind, or have learned to believe I am, as your only customer, late at night, your business. Perhaps my being alone is nothing less than an invitation for you to make enquiries while you run your eye over me. What’s the unshaved old man doing out so late at night in Brighton on a wet weekend in March? Shouldn’t he be thinking about escorting his accent back to Lincolnshire? Has he no home to get to? Where is he staying?

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All Stories, General Fiction

I Love You More by Harrison Kim

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A hollowness opened in me as I entered the house, a space within a space, as if I already sensed what had been lost.  In the TV room the stuffed toys lay piled almost to the ceiling, their little heads and tiny eyes facing up.  A whirring in my ears began, from the space within a space, “hello?” I said and the sound disappeared.  Where were the cats?  I paused at at the stairs to the second floor.  The steps up seemed staged, like a movie set, “Follow us, the show’s about to begin,” said the hollow in my head.  I went to the kitchen instead.

“I will not give in yet,” I thought, though that hollow space signalled over and over again “this is not going to be good.”

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Passing On by John J. Dillon

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Kemp emerged from the dark woods behind the little St. Andrew’s church and took a moment to look things over. One car sat in the small lot and a few stained glass windows glowed with feeble light. His watch showed 8:58 p.m. All good for his scheduled private confession.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Saturday Omelettes by Paul Kimm

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James was making the Saturday omelettes as they called them. The late morning meal he made each week whilst Penny took her long Saturday bath. He cracked two white shell eggs into the glass bowl. He preferred the white shell to the browner shell ones. He tapped in some salt and pepper, picked up the whisk and mixed slowly with the bowl secured between his arm and torso. He admired the way they went from two yellow spheres to a marbled swirl of yolk and transparent albumen, through to a singular, opaque, autumnal sun colour. The girls were playing in the garden, chasing each other around, shrieking when one made a grab for the other. The day was warm enough to keep the kitchen door to the garden open. He put a frying pan on the hob, lit the gas, and knifed in the butter which bubbled immediately. After circling the melted butter around the pan, he tilted the mix into it at a slight angle allowing it to slowly slide in. He went into the hallway and called upstairs.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Wrecking Ball by Stevie doCarmo

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“I’ve done it more than once. Which makes it possibly a bad habit.”  

 “What’s that?” Rama had asked.  

She’d been complexly twisted in her bus seat, patchouli-scented Jessica, pea-coated back to window, New Jersey gliding by behind her in what Rama remembered as a raw and drizzly November afternoon. “I just tell some people straight-out I’ll sleep with them if they want.”  

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All Stories, General Fiction

Biff Malibu by James Hanna

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My wife, Mary, and I sit on the deck of The Boatyard, a Sarasota seafood restaurant. Since our retirement, we lunch here several times a month. Mary is eating a hamburger because she is allergic to seafood. I am devouring fish-and-chips, which I have smothered with malt vinegar.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Strange Encounter by Tom Sheehan

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I knew it was one of “those” days the very moment I woke up, my head spinning as dawn clustered around me calling for attention, trying to snap me back to a real encounter, not the lingering touches of darkest night I had no control over.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Bride of Christ by Mary J Breen

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Every Sunday morning for the past nine years and one month, my mother-in-law has made her dauntless progress up the centre aisle of Holy Family Church on the arm of my husband. This, she believed, was ample evidence that despite his marriage to an ex-nun—holy women all of them, although those who leave their vocation perhaps not holy enough—her Danny’s primary devotion was still to his mother, not to this drab failure of a Grade Three teacher who got her claws into the school principal, no less, the gentle, much-loved Mr. Lynch. Sweet and kind and considerate with his staff and with the children, but away from school, the embodiment of an ineffectual man. But I didn’t know that then.

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All Stories, General Fiction

As If He Still Drives a Capri

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In the lull between my husband’s condemnations, I reminded our daughters that each Sunday is a Christmas. This way of thinking is Karen’s idea. She does Fridays and Saturdays in the shop with me.

She said when sorting citrus, ‘When life serves you lemons–’ and I held up my hand and asked, ‘Is there a cliché for grapefruit?’

Karen couldn’t think of one.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Last of the Roses by Tom Sheehan.

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That morning I was a thorn between two roses.

My wife Kay sent me out to water the flowers along the front and the driveway side of the house, and my mother, just now marking her first year as a widow and not yet a pest by visiting too often, coming for the day. It was a Saturday, a lazy day off and I wanted to fool around for a while before the day got going.

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