He put a rabbit’s foot in his pocket, scoured the garden for a four-leafed clover, and hung a horseshoe on their front door for luck.
Sarah suggested he hang the horseshoe points up, to keep luck from leaving.
He ignored her, yet again.
So she left. She had warned him!
Mary is Irish, superstitious, and a believer in luck coming in threes.
“What do you want?” asked the nurse.
What did he want? He once had a house, but all he remembered was a tumble and then pain. Then he had lost it all: mobility, independence, dignity, his house. Now he was lost.
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
Linda writes for both children and adults. She blogs at lindaschueler.com.
The story of the week for September 11 to 15 is…
Anchorless by Mary Haynes
Bored. I stretched out on the couch and took in the sunshine streaming through the gap in the curtains, luxuriating in the warmth.
For years, I’d imagined how great it would be to come back as a cat. And it was, but I’d never realized it would be so boring.
Philipp is a graphic artist, musician, historical martial artist, and professional copywriter. He has previously been published in Fifty Word Stories, and examples of his art, music, and writing can be found at pmselman.com.
Tattered memories: My first language, now long faded. A fence, reassuringly high, around a garden where time slept. Day trips through virgin forests, gathering wild berries and mushrooms. Suddenly, columns of soldiers goose-stepping in lock-step like a well-oiled machine. A week-long Atlantic crossing. Asking where, asking why. Getting no answers.
Alex has faint memories of 1930s Czechoslovakia.
I hear a noise in my kitchen and come down to find Brad Pitt guzzling chocolate milk straight from the carton. He says his motorcycle broke down en route to Missouri. Brad, if you left me without chocolate milk before breakfast on a school day, I will have your head.
Maura Yzmore’s day job involves quantum mechanics, dry-erase markers, making bad puns, and lots of technical writing. She lives with her family in the American Midwest, where she also writes, draws, and indulges her love for coffee, driving, and kickboxing. See more at maurayzmore.com.
It was Jo-Jo’s plan.
Break, enter, grab the artwork, drive.
But, she was home. A shot was fired.
A delay – the painting, which one?
Then sirens and a chase.
He’d had years to think about it.
Vivid in his memory, the searing heat of the asphalt on his face.
Jennifer M. Smith is a thinker, a tailor, an author, a sailor, but she’s no thief.
We’re city rats, but we don’t hustle too hard. As long as we have rent control, we can share an apartment. I’ll hand write notes for you to find, like,
Let’s have an aesthetic when we’re old
rock & rollers never dead
or retired jungle botanists
Let’s be insufferable together
Alyson Fortowsky writes and teaches in Toronto.
The turtle came by our boat again today, poking his big head up, observing me with wise but sad eyes.
I wish I could comprehend his need to communicate with me. Perhaps he saw what happened, why Sam disappeared in the wee hours in the skiff, taking only his sextant.
Mary spends winters living on a 35-foot sailboat in Florida and summers in Ontario. A wanderer by fate, she embraces photography, writing, acting, and fitness coaching as opportunities present themselves.
“Darling, we’re out of vodka.”
Those were the last words he’d want to hear.
She met him at the door, arms outstretched to take his coat and hat, playing her role perfectly.
“I’m going to the club,” he snarled. No kiss.
“I know,” she whispered to the closed door, smiling.
Jill Kiesow writes fiction and poetry, and has had two short stories published in the Matador Review and one due soon in Ariel Chart. She has worked and written for the Animal Protection Institute, was a guest author in the Sacramento News & Review, and has an English Writing degree. She is a long-time vegan and animal advocate, has worked at a shelter, and is an occasional foster provider. Jill is an at-home mom in rural Wisconsin with her husband, toddler, several rescued cats, and recently adopted shelter dog.