“You have been a great comfort to me, softening the hard times and cushioning the blows. Without your support, I would have found it much more challenging to sleep on so many difficult nights.”
With these words, and a waterfall of tears, I eulogized my dear, old friend, the sofa.
She had preferred it when her table was simply empty. An empty table could some day be filled.
What could you do with a table once it had become a grave?
Stilling her only child’s dying spasms, she emptied herself of tears, filling the empty places with resentment, determination, revolution.
This story is based on a title suggested by Ryan Culley-Waters.
As the hot sun descended, frightened by the rising of the cold blue moon, I stumbled on a root and fell headlong into nightmare.
Within myself, I chased and fled, pursuing sanity and evading madness.
I grasped sanity’s skirt. She pulled away, saying, “Your daughter is dead.”
Madness ensnared me.
This story was based on a title suggested by @KittyCatalyst.
Dr. Ruination slapped the red button that lowered John Bolt, handsome and impeccably dressed spy, into the huge aquarium.
Bolt found himself afloat in a stagnant pool of foul smelling water, surrounded by decaying fish carcasses.
Dr. Ruination was horrified. “Who turned off the oxygen pump for the barracuda tank?”
This is the second in a series of five stories by King Kool.
The reporter looked away as the private’s family marched out to face the television cameras. A soggy flag drooped at half-mast on their porch. They spoke of a kid who led rubber band fights, flashlight tag, bicycle jousts. His pen paused, hovered. A phrase consumed his mind: pornographer of sorrow.
Joseph S. Pete won a four month’s supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon by placing second in the poetry category of the 2010 PBR Art Contest. John Donne couldn’t say the same.
A merchant found an old oil lamp. Amazingly, a beautiful genie was summoned as he rubbed it.
“For freeing me, I will grant you one wish,” said the genie.
“I wish I didn’t have to worry about money,” the merchant said.
“So be it,” the genie said, and killed him.
This is the third in a series of stories from King Kool, who has previously contributed multiple other series.
As if he were sleeping, wrapped in swaddling clothes, she held him in her arms. He was warm against her chest, like an angel that had fallen from Heaven above and then returned home, leaving his tiny body behind.
Joshua left behind his footprints on her heart.
Shelia Burket is a wife and mother and the author of the upcoming “Sissy Stringbean” children’s stories. She has published one romance, titled “Longing For December,” which is available on Lulu.com and through the Kindle store. Read more of her writing at wvcoffeechick.blogspot.com.
She explained to me that produce was essential to progress. “Science?” she would say. “Show me science on an empty stomach!”
Farming was her calling. Everything else, she said, didn’t really matter.
A twist of fate brought me, undeserving, through the famine, left alone to carry her message of life.
He fell to his knees and held his hands to his chest, praying earnestly to the Lord.
He sobbed and cursed as they lowered the casket into the ground.
The nurse gently took his arm and led him back inside.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Fredrickson,” she said. “We’ll get you another goldfish.”
Laura Chester is a sixth form student hoping to go to university to study Creative Writing.
It made me mad that I couldn’t hide my sadness from them.
As the sun transformed my smile and let me age prematurely, I couldn’t forgive them for already moving on.
My last thought when my coal eyes hit the ground? “You little rascals will know the feeling soon enough!”
Originally from Germany, Tine moved to California about a year ago. Since then she has become a full-time mom taking care of a four-year-old chatterbox, which makes the fifty-word story a perfect format for her.