The story of the week for February 17 to 21 is…
How Long Do You Wait? by Ursula Hoult
All posts by Tim
JEREMY DAY: Mourning
“I’m afraid I’m leaving you,” you said at dinner.
Slightly drunk on wine, I smiled. Later, I kissed you goodnight. My dreams were troubled.
In the morning you were gone. Sunlight failed to warm or wake you, so I rose and walked to the kitchen. A stranger in our house.
Jeremy lives in Ontario, Canada, with his wife and two young children. He loves to write, but seldom does. He has amassed a significant pile of books as “must reads” by his bedside that get picked at page by page, but have not been finished. Jeremy loves his children, and looks forward to finishing those books, whenever Paw Patrol is not a thing anymore.
CANDACE KUBINEC: A Proper Snowstorm
We’re having a proper snowstorm—wind blowing sideways, schools cancelled, roads unplowed.
We’ve been expecting it, yet we are surprised and take inventory of our supply of bread, milk, and toilet paper.
All the while, there is a stirring of Spring bulbs, waiting to erupt in a blaze of ego.
Candace Kubinec posts her stories at storydribbles.wordpress.com and her poetry at rhymeswithbug.com.
KATLINA SOMMERBERG: A Toast to Immortality
The aging butler placed twin goblets down, then left with a bow.
Melissa took one with a shaking hand. Her brother’s apparition took the other; they tapped glasses.
She downed the cup in one gulp.
The ghost twisted into flesh, wine splattering his skin.
Her cup clanked to the floor.
Katlina Sommerberg lives in San Francisco, where the summer nights are colder than the winter days of her childhood. She is a cog in the machine for Big Tech, where she writes software and loves to hate her company’s perks. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in AntipodeanSF, 365tomorrows, and 101 Words.
JOHN PETER KAY: Steady
We would watch the same series on TV every night. There was something reassuring in watching the bedraggled, anti-social detective’s steady but honourable mental decline. She’d point at the screen and joke that that was me. Since my diagnosis she doesn’t say it anymore, but then she doesn’t need to.
John Peter Kay is a primary school teacher by day, and a poet by stealth; who finds time to write during his commute to work. He irregularly reads his work with Ware Poets. After a decade abroad, John now lives with his wife and daughter near London in the South of England. His blog can by found at balloonysaintjohn.wordpress.com
EILEEN MARDRES: Horror show or real life?
Pat doesn’t watch horror movies.
Pat came to Canada a refugee. Lived in a single room. Shared a narrow bed. Lived in fear of a knock on the door.
He lay shivering at night listening to screaming as one neighbor chased another with a knife.
Pat doesn’t watch horror movies.
Eileen is a grandma twelve times over, who, now retired, has switched from writing as part of her employment for others to writing along her own creative path. She has a poem recently published in Mothers of Angels 2.
URSULA HOULT: How Long Do You Wait?
The fish were late this year. Stanley sat with the collected fishermen and ate the egg sandwich he’d made at home.
Home was dusty. It was never dusty before Evelyn’s death. So he came to the river and waited.
The other men drifted away. “It’s over,” they said.
He waited.
Over a lifetime, Ursula Hoult has done many things – a little bit of a lot of things, to put it another way. As you read, you may wonder “did she make that bit up”? And the answer is quite likely: “Yes, because it suited the story.” She is currently focused on flashfiction writing. See more at ursulahoult.com.
SUSAN GALE WICKES: The Gathering
I’d never shopped for my mother before.
She was strong. She was independent. She loved shopping trips.
The suit was elegant. Shades of gold and brown. I could almost see her in it.
Later that week, I did.
She looked beautiful.
We gathered around her to say our last goodbyes.
Susan Gale Wickes is from Indiana and enjoys reading and writing 50-Word Stories.
GRAHAM ROBERT SCOTT: Corn Goddess
She cracks the door open, and the feds burst in. One with a clipboard announces she’s been elected President, congratulations. As they dress her in body armor, she sobs and protests, eyes windows for snipers. Clipboard explains she won by a single ballot. Quaking, she wishes she’d remembered to vote.
Graham Robert Scott’s stories have appeared in Barrelhouse, Nature, and Pulp Literature. See more at hemicyon.wordpress.com.
JEN MIERISCH: Mt. Olympus, December 2079
Poseidon drew the short straw.
Hera sighed. “Yes, they’re irredeemable. But I’ll miss those goofballs. Their bridges, computers, MAS*H… Genius.”
The trident swung. The floodwaters flowed. The underworld gained eight billion souls.
Hephaestus prepared the drafting table. “Okay. Humans 2.0.”
Aphrodite nudged Ares aside. “This time, I’ll lead the design.”
Jen Mierisch draws inspiration from science fiction, ghost stories, and the wacky idiosyncrasies of human nature. She lives, works, and writes just outside Chicago, Illinois.