Category Archives: Fiction

Sisterhood of the travelling 45

Posted on by February 25, 2020

For this week’s Trifecta challenge (this week’s word is confidence), I’m back in the nursing home with DoDo and Wilma. Take a second to read their previous (short) escapade. They have now returned from their shopping spree unscathed, as they have every week so far. It helps that Wilma’s great grandson helped them hack the garden gate code, but sooner or later, they’re going to get caught.

Here is the first of two nonfiction companion pieces to go with this little story.

And here is the other companion.

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“I know what you did.” Clara Jean Phillips peered at Wilma and DoDo from the hall, then waddled in and perched on  Wilma’s ladder back rocker.… Read the rest

Flori and the Tourist

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Flori flitted down the alley, a crisp twenty folded in her hand. She tossed the wallet in the dumpster. She wasn’t big time; she didn’t fool with the credit cards. Urre and Kulta, who needed drugs, took bolder risks. Flori emptied out enough to eat and kept a low profile.

A sound at the alley’s mouth alerted her. She looked back long enough to see the tourist’s head, the same distinctive ponytail she had noticed when peeling the wallet free of his pocket. “Shit,” she muttered. Then she yelled, “check the trash mister,” and made a show of running straight into the dead end wall, only to whip around and charge when he was nearly on top of her.… Read the rest

Observe

Posted on by February 25, 2020

The murdered girl stared at her own reflection. As dead as she was, she still retained her most basic functions. She could see herself, smell the rank odor of her decay, hear memories that wept down from the fluorescent lights.

She heard the squeak of sneakers. “Can you change her?” her mother asked. Was that the smell, then? Just shit? Had she been upgraded from decomposing to merely falling out in clumps?

“Oh,” said the nurse. “Yes, I’ll get that right away.” The murdered girl heard the soft-soled retreat as the nurse went for supplies so she could pretend to observe yet another formality reserved for the living.… Read the rest

Not What I Meant To Do At All

Posted on by February 25, 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Mrs. McIntyre,

I’m sorry I ran over your mailbox with Dad’s car. I thout I hit the braks. I guess not. I’ll pay you the $65 slowly cos I only ern five dollrs a week.

Snrly,

Lexi

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This is my entry for this week’s Trifextra. We are to write an apology in 33 words (salutation and closing don’t count against). I owe credit to my co-author, Caroline, who helped me with the spelling and posed as Lexi. However, she wants everyone to know she would never steal Dad’s car, and that our car is just ‘our car’, not ‘Dad’s car’.  … Read the rest

Gossip

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Skip to the backstory

“That girl’s got to find herself a man.” Doreen, DoDo to all but a few of the newest nurses, stabbed her finger at Jennifer Anniston.

“I think she’s got somebody, hasn’t she?” asked Wilma. The women maintained an easy friendship based on their shared love of celebrity gossip. They watched the all the shows about movie stars’ lives, and they collected magazines so they could compare nose jobs, boob jobs, and lovers.

DoDo said, “She needs one that’ll stick.”

The afternoon nurse, Audrey, swept into the room.“That rag’s a week old,” said Audrey after she administered the appropriate pills.… Read the rest

My Brother On The Mound

Posted on by February 25, 2020

“Hot pretzel and a package of candy,” says the woman in pink. She has a glazed look, like she’s been standing in line for a thousand years.

“Six fifty.”

She gives me a credit card, and I go for the pretzel. We’re shorthanded, so I’m my own runner.

“Get me one,” Brady calls from his register.

“The syrup’s out in the diet cola,” Kelly shouts.

Their voices blend together with the clanging, whirring, and popping that is a ballpark concession stand. The PTA gets funds, Minor League baseball gets good neighbor points, and I get a headache. I can’t hear the score over the cacophony.… Read the rest

Fiction: Sometimes a memory

Posted on by February 25, 2020

We drove over five hundred miles to see the house where Mama was born.  “I’m sure someone else lives there by now,” Ainsley said.

“You’re an optimist, Sis,” I told her.  Mama and her parents abandoned the old place in the fifties, just walked away after the wreck. Even though it happened fifteen years before Ainsley was born (seventeen years before me), that wreck dominated the landscape of our childhood.

Granddaddy drove an Edsel in the days before they invented good taste. Mama said he loved that ugly old thing, but she and her brother thought the vertical grille looked like a sour faced aunt puckering up to kiss them the worst hello ever.… Read the rest

Wolf’s need

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Three days after Mrs. Carmody brought us the silver bullets, a man missing his right hand came to the door. Daddy looked out for a long time, like he didn’t see the person right in front of his eyes. The man leaned in against the jamb and shook, though the weather  was fair. Everything about him was mud brown except that arm. It was swollen and purple from the wrist to almost the elbow. He held it out to Daddy and said, “Please?”

Daddy didn’t move. “That your hand Annie Carmody found in her wolf trap?”

The man nodded, though it was at first hard to tell that apart from his quaking.… Read the rest

The brain is down

Posted on by February 25, 2020

“What the hell is everybody doing in here?”

Mandy, the union representative, shifted comfortably in a break room chair. She studied her manager. There was an empty seat beside her. She gestured to it, inviting the manager to sit. He did not. “The brain is down,” she said. “Nobody can clock in.”

“So take a roll and we’ll clock everybody in manually when IT gets the brain back up.”

She shook her head. She articulated the ‘o’ in her, “No” with extra wide lips.

“What did you say to me?”

“The last time this happened, HR refused to validate the hand signed timesheets and it was an entire pay cycle before they got it straight.… Read the rest

A moment’s rest

Posted on by February 25, 2020

 

“No time,” Charlie gasps. “I’m sorry.” and then the clawed arms shatter the window and plunge through his abdomen. Gore spraying from his wounds, he squeals, “Run baby!” and throws me his keys.

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Trifextra this week chose a challenge posed by community member MOV from Word Cut. She asks us to: “Write a horror story in 33 words, without the words blood, scream, died, death, knife, gun, or kill. Good luck.”

… Read the rest