You said I was soft.
A marshmallow. A cowardly custard. A yellow-bellied jelly baby. Such sweet descriptions for something so distasteful.
You called me sugar and I hoped it was because you thought I’d rot your teeth.
Better face the fact that I’m full fat. Putting the die into diet.
teven Holding lives in the United Kingdom. His story TURNING A TRICK appears in the collection BLOODLUST from Black Hare Press. You can follow his work at stevenholding.co.uk.
Mara’s seasoning shop specialized in rare spices.
As a Jewish woman, barely scraping by amid the loneliness of big-city life, she found it pleasantly validating that her most profitable time of year was Passover, when hundreds of customers came to her for bitter herbs.
Occasionally she wondered: was this irony?
This story was based on the prompt “bitter herbs” at TypeTrigger.
My life is like a bowl of oatmeal. It’s bland, grey, and kind of lumpy, only becoming bearable when I pile on the brown sugar.
Unlike the rest, the “brown sugar” part isn’t a metaphor. I crave the stuff constantly, by the bowlful.
Ironically, I’m kind of a bitter person.
This story is based on a title suggested by @cthomlan.