Years ago I told the gardener, “One cat is enough. Drown those kittens.”
Indifferent, he pulled them from the mother and fetched the bucket.
We watched them struggling in the chill water, pansy faces upturned, soft mitts flailing, frantic squeals dying away.
So long ago, but it haunts me still.
Catherine Mathews is a State Department retiree formerly stationed overseas in Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv, Athens, Frankfurt, and Istanbul. She is now living in Northern Virginia and writing about her life.
Broke and broken, he returned. His father’s lavish reception did nothing to shake the demons chasing him.
The grace shamed him, the flattery embarrassed him, and the wine reminded him.
Let’s go back, they whispered.
That night, he left.
His brother scoffed, his suspicions confirmed.
His father is still waiting.
Jason Hart manages a Christian bookstore in South Carolina. He enjoys writing short stories in his spare time. You can read his other stories at jasonlhart.blogspot.com.
“Phooey to you!” I said to Russell. Sometimes you just have to stand up for yourself and tell someone Phooey. “You heard me,” I added, a little louder this time. “I told you Phooey!”
Russell blushed and looked down at his shoes. “You’re such a big old meanie,” he whispered.
Philip Zunzuncito Sequoia lives in England. He likes the music of The Fall. He dislikes marzipan.
I grabbed my keys off the kitchen counter and walked to my car, which was parked under the only working street light.
I wondered whether she would prefer a red or white rose, and why she would care when she would never actually see them, or anything else, ever again.
Joe Russo has been published on Linguistic Erosion. When he’s not writing he’s blogging. You can see more of his stuff at The Homo Whisperer.
She posed for the camera, her smile just big enough to show the tips of her front teeth.
Tilting her head to the right, then left, she wondered which shot would make it to her profile page, how many likes it’d get, and when the world would finally notice her.
Debbi Antebi (@debbisland) lives in Istanbul, Turkey, and blogs at debbiantebi.wordpress.com.
Albert’s wife of 47 years was a concert pianist who loved her 1929 Grotrian Steinweg grand.
After she died, Albert moved it to the beach and placed her body on the strings. Floating away on the tide, the gasoline-soaked Steinweg burned quickly, and 260 strings exploded in a funereal fanfare.
Michael Coolen is a pianist, composer, actor, performance artist, and writer who lives in Corvallis, Oregon.
He still feels her warmth, the radiance of her smile on their first date, 6,622 days ago.
Compulsively, he relives the emptiness when the subway slowly pulled him away from her for the last time, 44 days later.
Would their romance have unfolded differently if they’d known he had Asperger’s?
Andrew D. Hwang is the author of his own fate.
Her son took her to see the scorched husk of their old farmhouse one last time. He stood behind her as the salt smell of earthworms soothed her wrinkled skin.
In her eyes, a mud-splattered boy ran through the yard and into the house. “Take off your shoes,” she said.
Tracy Gold is a Fiction MFA candidate at the University of Baltimore. She also works as a marketer, writer, and editor for technology companies. Find her at tracycgold.com.
An antibiotic left Mama almost deaf at 92.
Long distance I call about my son’s report card.
“He’s playing the recorder? Wonderful!”
More misinterpretations follow.
Frustrated, I yell, “I love you!”
She answers, “I love you, too.”
We have that: three words rattling at the bottom of the pill bottle.
Beth Tillman has learned not to rely on the word count tool in her document production software to give her fifty. Some things can’t be delegated.
You put yourself in danger,
when I wanted to get hit.
I feel so grateful now,
but it’s you that I miss.
Now you are lying cold and still,
I love you to bits.
If only I hadn’t been so selfish,
and thought as much of me as you did.
See more of Connell’s literary misadventures at paragraphplanet, WTD Magazine, and postcardshorts.com.