Furious at our fathers for divorcing our mothers, we made a pact to never marry.
I received her note inviting me to her wedding. The lack of details convinced me she felt guilty.
I was wrong, though. The guilt came not from breaking our vow but from marrying my father.
Carol Ayer’s short fiction has been published by Woman’s World, True Story, Golden Visions Magazine, and The Long and the Short of It.
The farmer waved as the hikers disappeared up the trail towards the highway. “Eighth lost group this summer,” he said.
“Ever get tired of this?” his wife asked.
“Giving folks directions ain’t no trouble.”
“I mean the farm, and never goin’ nowhere.”
The farmer shrugged. “Ain’t nowhere I wanna go.”
This story was based on the prompt “up the trail” at TypeTrigger.
My wife spotted the chip in our car’s windshield first. “That’s a safety hazard,” she said.
“It’s no big deal,” I replied, but when I bumped out of the driveway it split into a larger crack. I was staring disgustedly at the crack when I missed the stop sign.
Crunch.
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.
“Come away with me, my darling!”
“Oh, my dear, I thought you’d never ask! Where shall we go?”
“It doesn’t matter where we go, does it, my dove?”
“No, truly it doesn’t, so long as we’re together…”
She felt differently upon their arrival at his cottage behind the garbage dump.
This story was based on the prompt “away with me” at TypeTrigger.
Thrashing through the midnight darkness,
he stumbled
but did not cry out.
Silently he lay
listening to silence.
Then he fumbled
in his pocket
for a match.
In the flame’s flickering glow, he was struck
by irony
and the traitor’s arrow.
He had assumed
he would die
by the sword.