She’s an entrepreneur, though not of life-altering stuff. No vaccines or edu-tech.
She makes beauty potions for the uber-rich. Sells the promise of lifelong allure, at 500% profit. They buy happily.
Then she gives their money away. Feeds, shelters, medicates the destitute. Anonymously.
She’s the legal kind of Robin Hood.
Megha Nayar writes to remain sane. It is her escape from drudgery, dealing with people, and the drudgery of dealing with people.
It had just turned evening when she walked out of the Bombay Café. Not in Bombay, not even close, but on a nondescript street in a posh part of Los Angeles.
Just down the street from gilt-edged mansions there stood pink stucco dwellings inhabited by drive-by invisibles.
City of Angels.
Janet Clare has published online flash fiction and essays. She is currently completing her third novel.
Two souls waited to be born.
I will be a beautiful girl, said the first, born into wealth.
I will be a lonely boy, said the second, abused and abandoned.
But why? asked first.
Because I’ll learn more in my few years of hardship than in your lifetime of privilege.
Daniel Wilson lives in the foothills of North Carolina with his wife and children.
Friday. Like every day, the widower awoke to a still estate, silence broken occasionally by his stoic butler’s steps.
His children had left long ago with their trust funds.
His diminished spirits lifted when his chauffeur drove him to his last joy. Taking his place, he smiled. “Welcome to Walmart!”
Bryan Joyner is a middle-aged banker who read about 50-word stories in Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind”, and began using the concept to connect with his two college age children. Each of them write stories and send them to each other for feedback.
He called me at work. “The house is flooding!” he said, then laughed.
I rushed home, panicking. He was wading knee-deep through black sludge in the living room. “It’s crude oil!” he said. “It’s coming in through the bathtub! We’re rich!”
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have lit that celebratory cigarette.
This story was based on the prompt “it’s crude” at TypeTrigger.
“I’m very rich,” he told her.
“I have seven doctorate degrees,” he told her.
“I’m an Olympic gold medallist in track and field,” he told her.
“I have starred in three different Broadway productions,” he told her.
“I’m wanted in fourteen states for forgery, perjury, and fraud,” he told her.
He’d purchased the seventy-five foot yacht on a whim. With a fortune like his, such a toy was a trifle.
The first time he took it out, he “accidentally” ran over three sailboats and threw some lawyers overboard to handle it.
Bartholomew Regis Alberto Tanardier never thought about his initials.
@Charles_Mor told me to write a story about boats, so I did.