Summers I spent beachcombing, overturning shells, picking up crabs’ legs, poking under seaweed, looking for interesting driftwood. Always hoping for a ukidama (Japanese glass float) or some other treasure, but I never found anything of value—until the day we simultaneously reached for the pretty bottle now gracing our mantlepiece.
Robert Carlberg loves beachcombing and long walks on the beach.
One.
Tom was surprised by your skin color when you came out, but that never affected his steadfast love for you. You were always his.
Two.
Grandma held a two-year vigil in the cemetery while waiting for the bell above your grave to ring. Next time we’re going with cremation.
Robert Carlberg is a retired technical writer and magazine columnist.
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”
“I’d like to report a missing person.”
“How long has this person been missing, ma’am?”
Huh. That required some mental calculation. “About eight years?”
“Eight years? Why are you reporting this now?”
Time to tell the truth. “Because I don’t want to be lost anymore.”
Robert Carlberg has occasional sleepless nights when he eats too much salad. On those nights he sometimes writes stories. Blame the bleu cheese.
The billionaire’s gorgeous wife was killed when his jet crashed. Grief-stricken he vowed to bring her back.
Taking some of her tissue to the research lab he owned, he instructed the staff to clone her immediately, despite the law.
A year later they triumphantly handed him his newborn baby.
Robert Carlberg writes to try to silence the voices in his head, and sometimes it works. More often they suggest stories… and then want credit if they’re published.
Marlon got his first timecake for his 40th birthday. He ate a quarter of it, taking him back to 30 again, a good time for him. He wanted the opportunity to rethink a few decisions made in his mid-thirties… particularly those that led to his new family and the timecake.
This story came to Robert Carlberg in a dream. As these things do, it made more sense in the dream.
I was born six weeks premature. I got good grades but I left school before graduating. I’ve always had trouble holding a job for any length of time.
Consequently, paying bills was often a problem.
I topped out at 5 foot 3.
That’s my life in a nutshell. 49, 50.
This 50-word story was distilled down by Robert Carlberg from a 17-volume 1,460,000 word massive opus written over a span of 23 years. No it wasn’t.
Why can’t you speak plainly? Why must you speak in riddles, in puzzles to be solved, in codes that I can’t decipher?
I’m always honest with you. I tell you exactly what I’m thinking, so you always know where you stand with me.
I don’t understand why you left me.
Men are from Mars, and women speak Venusian. We end up playing darts with each other, wearing targets on our hearts. Robert Carlberg is better at language than darts.
Our blended household combines memories of lost spouses
Picking and choosing what to retain of our former lives
Your strengths shore me up where I am weak, and
My children’s pictures don’t remind you of yours
Together we strive to appear whole again
Though we know we are irretrievably broken.
Robert Carlberg is a retired technical writer.
When the writer took his wife on a hike up the mountain trail, little did he know that his difficulty with words would cause her death. As they navigated the ravine they startled a massive rattlesnake, which struck out.
The writer, terrified, tried every snakebite anecdote he could think of.
Robert Carlberg struggles with words sometimes. The ones he’s looking for can stay frustratingly just out of reach, while unbidden nonsense frosts his pirate topiary.
A rocket’s arc, straight up and burned out by 27, emulating our heroes. Fame and fortune and luxurious self-indulgence, because 40 was unimaginable. Yet the fame never came, the fortune either, 40 is gone and now we stare 70 in the mirror and wonder: where did we go wrong?
Robert Carlberg retired as soon as he was able, and now spends his time not doing everything he does not want to do.