Contributor: R.A. Conine

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She woke to a sort of fog. She had that sometimes. The world was blurred over, covered in an unnerving mist. It made her think of a particular old aunt who had milky cataracts, a woman long dead and gratefully so, from a childhood barely remembered. She wondered if the gauzy morning haze wasn’t some potent harbinger of her own future. She could see herself grown old and doddering, slowly going blind, a lifetime of scrabbling for hard cash wasted. She envisioned dying with the question “why” still framed by her wrinkled lips.
The air in the room was warm, musky. She shook her head and the fog cleared, as it always did. That future, if it was hers, was far away. For now there was sun and warmth, freedom and the road. There was shame too. It was always with her no matter how far away she ran. Along with everything else her old shadow bought to the table, shame was a cheap date. He always took her to places like this one, cheesy hotel rooms in dead end towns with names like Winnemucca, Nevada.
She threw aside the ancient paisley patterned coverlet, rose naked and dropped her feet over the edge of the bed. The carpet beneath her toes was threadbare and gritty. She shivered a little. She didn’t remember much. The night was a blur of roughened flesh, sweat and tequila. His beard was harsh and prickly. He laughed too much.
She couldn’t recall his face or name. She hoped he was gone. But he probably wasn’t. He’d left behind a soft-pack of Marlboro Reds, a faded “Dear Hunter” ball cap and a thumb-worn paperback book. He was a reader. That impressed her.
She rubbed her teeth with a finger, blinked the sleep away and stood. In rooms like this one, she had slept in a hundred or more, there was almost no space to move around. Step out of bed on the right and your tits would be pressed against the closet door. Get out on the left and your hips were flat against the wall. In this case, the left side contained a window covered by white linen curtains. Well, they weren’t actually white, not anymore. If she had to associate a color with dusty age, cigarette smoke, bad sex and booze, then it would be the color of those curtains, more or less.
She pulled them aside and peered through old glass fogged by years of accumulated automobile exhaust carried on the wind from the nearby interstate. She could hear of the rumble of the big trucks but she couldn’t see them. Beyond the window lay a magical verge of thick, brilliant greenery. The colors were as vivid as old Fuji Film images. A bush had clawed its way up the rough red bricks of the hotel wall. It seemed to be trying desperately to open the window and get in, to say hello, to ask for a cup of coffee perhaps. Beyond the leaves she saw grass blades packed so densely together that she doubted she would sink if standing atop them.
Her face was pressed so tight to the window that her breath was fogging the glass, dimming the beautiful vision in a way that made her sad. She pulled back her chin and considered inviting the plant to share her company. He’d have so many tales to tell of loud one-night stands and drunken gardeners who had tried to mow him down. He would probably make a fine traveling companion if permitted to dip his roots in wet soil for a while each night.
The door rattled in its frame and opened on complaining hinges. She didn’t turn immediately. She was reluctant to face him. She was nude. He was probably ungainly, at best. She tended to pick the low-hanging fruit. Her ex-boyfriend, who dubbed himself a “spiritual psychologist”, explained that it had “something to do with her sense of self-esteem”. This probably explained why she wanted to hit him, always, all the time.
“Hey,” he said in husky but altogether pleasant voice, “Gotcha some coffee from the diner down the street. Figured you could use a wake up.”
“Yeah,” she answered blithely. This one had manners. Maybe…
“Nice ass,” he commented.
Maybe not.
“The tat you got on your lower back; s’posed to be the sun rising over the moon, right?” He chuckled.
Surprisingly bright. He was a reader and a thinker. Maybe…
“Goddamn, girl. You ever gonna turn around so I can see them tits?”
No. He was none of those things. He was just another body, another traveler on the long sad road she walked.
She turned…


- - -
Please visit my website to discover more of my work. I enjoy vignettes, horror, science fiction and combining the three into interesting soups with unexpected ingredients.

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Author: R.A. Conine

Contributor: Gary Clifton

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Old Captain DuPree, fifteen years the commander of Dallas Homicide arrived early as always, had four cups of coffee, then waddled down the hall for his morning constitutional. He dropped deader than last Years Christmas spirit. They pried him out of the stall, funeralized the remains, and began looking for a replacement.
The Conga line of kiss-ups and related types nearly trampled each other in the fervor to crowd to the front to do their best work to land one of the most coveted jobs in the DPD. By the magic of the voodoo cop promotional process, the fools promoted Billie "Zero" Grifford to the job. Billie Zero was now Captain Zero.
Zero was a total jerk - the world was home to many. Look up the word in Webster's - Zero's photo would appear. His career was meteoric. Proper maintenance of his public relations and brown nose campaign and he was a future contender for the Chief's spot. Zero was already monitoring the Chief of Police's trips to the john, praying to the God of Sorry Flakes for the miracle of deja vu.
Zero decided as commander of homicide, he needed to lead a mission. We had squeezed up an arrest warrant for badass biker Cletus "Bag" Bonelli. Cletus had beat his ol' lady, Rosa "Barf Bucket" Garcia's brains into mush with a tire iron, then ran her through a tree shredder. Rosa was certainly very dead.
"Everone got vests?" Zero asked. But, hey, management didn't need no stinkin' vest. He'd hide and watch.
Bag was holed up in a junk yard office inside a concertina-wire topped fence in west Dallas. A pit bull, accustomed to eating at least one human daily, patrolled the perimeter.
Bag's name stemmed from his colostomy bag, courtesy of a cop's gut-shot. What we didn't know was a Louisiana prison guard had shot off his left foot. He navigated on a wooden replacement.
Maggs Washington maced the dogdung out of the pit-bull, literally, Red Harper cut the gate-chain, and in pitch blackness, we were on the door in seconds. But Bag had wandered to a corner to take a leak and heard us coming.
Big problem - the bag had another skel in that little camper with him. Bag broke for the fence. The other guy, a biker named "Gator" popped out and cut loose with a little .25 pistol. Harper .12 gauged Gator into that great rehab center in the sky, his head innards sprinkled over a three yard circle.
With the agility of a fleeing rat, Bag scurried over the fence and down the alley in a sort of side-straddle-hop. Maggs, who had run for Texas Tech and Harper, who often ran his mouth, pursued. Zero appeared from behind cover. In the name of fools everywhere, he was filming the chase with a video camera - a career booster sure as sundown.
Out of camera range in the dark, in less than a block, Maggs snagged a leg as Bag tried to top another fence. Harper, big as a barn and half as smart, lumbered up still clutching a nasty cigar in the corner of his mouth. He bear-grabbed the other leg and Bag came down in two pieces.
"Maggs, we tore this sucker in two," Harper held up the wooden foot in the dark.
"Prosthetic device, Harper," she studied the foot.
"Damn tootin' it's pathetic. Faulty construction."
Shortly, the trio appeared within Zero's camera-strobe, the Bag leaning on Maggs, Harper packing the foot. Zero would never have walked down the alley to meet the odd trio - too dark.
"Tore off my damned foot," Bag wailed.
"It's okay, Captain," Harper waved the prosthesis aloft. "It's a pathetic device."
"Great Scott," Zero sputtered. "My career. This can't be happening, Harper, you stupid son-of..."
The camera lights went dark. I flash-lighted Captain Zero's last known position. Our leader had fainted into the alley mud. Zero languished in the psycho ward, then with the shrink's recommendation he was assigned to park cars in the visitors lot. Zero had found a home. And oh, yeah, Bag got the always popular three cocktail needle.


- - -
Gary Clifton, forty years a cop, has over sixty short fiction pieces published or pending with on line sites. Clifton, an M.S. from Abilene Christian University has been shot at, shot, stabbed and sued. He is now retired.

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Author: Gary Clifton

Contributor: Eric Suhem

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“3rd floor souls, Hardware and Lawn Care!” announced the department store elevator operator, a round jovial man with twinkling eyes and a mischievous grin. Helen and her husband Don were in the elevator, carrying boxes of hats.

Looking at Don from under her floppy hat, Helen said, “I had a dream that I was in a lobby of 400 elevators, each set of elevator doors a different color. Every few seconds, I hear the ping of one of the elevators, and I run toward its open doors, which slam shut as soon as I reach them. Then another elevator pings, I run toward its doors, they slam shut, and so on. So I keep missing the doors, but in the dream I’m learning how to miss the doors in style. My spiritual advisor says that all this has to do with issues of abandonment. What do you think, Don?”

Don hadn’t heard her, as his mind was filled with visions of green grass, fertilizers, sprinklers, and various lawn care responsibilities. “It’s not sensible to have so many hats,” he observed, looking at Helen’s hat boxes.

He set the boxes down in the elevator, and stepped out onto the 3rd floor of the department store, suddenly finding himself in the middle of a large expanse of grass. A woman in a blue tunic rode across the lawn on a riding mower, waving to him. “Join me on the mower, Don!” she yelled cheerily, “Adventure awaits!”

“You missed a spot,” said Don, pointing to a patch of un-mowed grass, as the woman in the blue tunic rode the mower around in circles.

“Good observation, Don,” said the round jovial elevator operator with the mischievous grin, his twinkling eyes cutting through him. Helen looked on without much regret as Don boarded the riding mower, deserting her in the elevator as the doors closed.

On the next floor, a man in a yellow tunic entered the elevator and picked up one of Helen’s hat boxes. “Get your hands off of that,” ordered Helen promptly, slapping him with a fly swatter she had bought in the ‘House Wares’ section. The man in the yellow tunic wasn’t bothered so much by the fly swatter itself, but did not enjoy the swats of the hard plastic coating package in which the fly swatter was contained. Nevertheless, he continued to eye the hats with great interest.

The elevator stopped at each floor, but Helen did not disembark, as the level of her soul had not been reached. "You're soul's floor is the roof," said the elevator operator jovially, his twinkling eyes cutting through her. Upon reaching the roof, the elevator doors opened upon a sweeping, colorful sky. The man in the yellow tunic led Helen onto the top of the building. As she stared at an airplane in the sky, she flashed back to when she was 8 years old, waving to her parents on the runway as they boarded their flight, her mother in a floppy hat, her father wearing a fedora, hours before they would disappear from her life in a plane crash.

“Hey, we love your hats,” said the people on the roof, all in yellow tunics, admiring the contents of Helen’s hat boxes.

“You’re the first people who have appreciated my accumulation of hats,” she declared, gratefully. Earlier in the day, she had met with her spiritual advisor, who told her that she was buying too many hats.

In the rooftop community, Helen instantly became known, and thrived as ‘The Hat Lady’.


- - -
Eric Suhem lives in California and enjoys the qualities of his vegetable juicer.

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Author: Eric Suhem

Contributor: P Morgan

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2.

Everyone was sick and this got into the food. It was the first time I had been inside someplace I wasn’t allowed out of, and it had been my idea, but even then I felt it wasn’t, really, that I had been put upon to do this, like it was a ponying-up of back dues to the mental health establishment for a few years of putting up with me. I didn’t eat anything the whole week.

Watching televised rodeo with John, he explained how he wasn’t abusing Xanax or a danger to his kids, because he was a good dad. He could tell I was one, too. When his mom came to visit she told me to avoid contact with the law, because once you’re in the system, they’ve got you. Damn black-and-whites. This was when you could still smoke inside of some places, so she did.

John called me, once, when we were both out, and I never listened to his voicemail because it frightened me.

1.

I framed it experimentally, like I was an ethnographer, covert because myself. I left the ring in the glove box and took an advantageous seat at the bar, still laconic with only early Fridayers, older folks with real lives and money to spend on trips out with friends, none of which I had. I did, though, have a debit card that was functioning something like an unintentional credit card, debiting an emptiness into deeper, but totally abstract, emptiness, as if negative dollars meant something to someone like me and it was worth keeping track of. They should just close it, I thought, so fuck them if they don’t.

I brought my notebook, and an actual book with words (my notebook mostly held half-assed pictures only drawn to mask my constant monitoring of whichever space I was in). It gave me, I hoped, an air of sophisticated aloofness: lone drinker with the world on his mind, so full of creative sap that he needed to carry a notebook like a basin to catch the valuable excess of what he could internally manage, I hoped they would imagine. I had hypothesized that my inability to find a new lover - after Erica, silent now for a week - had to do with my wedding ring. So here I was, without it, darker concealer even on the base of my left ring finger to mask the paleness, just to be sure, testing whether or not I could theoretically score.

I was there because I hated my wife, because I hated my life.

0.

My son spoke only in riddles that seemed intentionally arch, not-quite two years old, just a few weeks after I had almost killed him, twice, unintentionally. I found myself, that morning, trying to reproduce the thought pattern of a toddler, construct a meaningful sentence that he could seriously answer. He had no idea what a pill was. Surprising myself, I hit on one.

Did you eat any candy today?

Yes. (Said with a carefree and so devastating gappy smile, all the more because of the still angry-looking suture across his left cheek.)

What...color was it? (Not yellow, not yellow, not yellow...)

Yellow.

And that’s why I was, an hour later, trying to coax a small boy who had seen quite enough of urgent care lately, thank you, into drinking more of the thick black charcoal mixture I had been handed at the ER along with some very suspicious looks. (300 mg, the Poison Control operator had said, surrealy calm, well, that’s quite a large amount for someone his size, so I would recommend taking him to a doctor, like she was suggesting I get the pasta. I was disappointed, as though there had ever been a chance that she might say something else.) His clothes were already ruined.

3.

There was no one else to pick me up. Who’s Erica, she asked when I got in. I found your notebook under the driver’s seat.

I made her up, I said, easily, because it was technically true. I put my seat belt on. Where’s the kid?

Don’t. What do you mean made her up.

They’re just stories, you know, imagined, I said. For diversion, I guess.

You imagine a girl named Erica, who does those things, as a diversion. She chewed this while she drove.

Don’t you want to know what it was like in there, I asked. And where’s the kid?

Diversion from what, she wanted to know.


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Author: P Morgan

Contributor: Leanne Gregg

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Audrey hugged her tuba case closer to her body in an effort to shield herself from the biting December wind. She squinted at the street--willing the bus to appear around the corner and pick her up at the stop. She wiggled her toes inside her tennis shoes, checking to see if they were still attached. They were.
Ben came to the bus stop every morning at precisely 7:27 a.m. in order to stand in the same vicinity as her for a glorious 8 minutes and 45 seconds. Once, three weeks ago she said, “It looks like rain.” All he could do was grunt in agreement.
Audrey spun towards the shelter and felt her tuba case make contact with a warm body. She heard a thud followed by a high-pitched yelp and a small explosion of index cards. Not again, she thought. Even though she loved her tuba, there were often times when she wished she played something more convenient.
Ben, momentarily stunned by the impact, blinked. Then he panicked because he realized that he dropped his index cards. He sprang into action like a wild but terrifyingly beautiful falcon, at least that was how he imagined himself—in reality he resembled more of a domesticated parakeet who had happened to have fallen off of his tiny plastic swing.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t see you. Hey, what’re on these things anyway?” she asked examining the card she was holding.
“Nothing!” Ben announced loudly, grabbing the card away from her.
“Nothing? Really?”
Ben paused for a moment and looked at the puff of curly, carrot colored hair, her large navy blue eyes, and her round wind burned cheeks--rosy from the cold. What’s the word? He thought wondered to himself. Cherubic.
Audrey looked at him, taking in his appearance. He was tall and somewhat gangly in his black, wool coat, dark jeans and clownishly large, black high-tops. He looks like a clarinet, she thought. She didn’t know how she felt about clarinets—she didn’t much care for woodwinds.
He cleared his throat, “Well, it looks like the bus is finally here. Do you need any help with your case?”
“I’ve always managed by myself, thanks.”
“Oh,” he said flatly.
They boarded the bus; Audrey went in first, pushing her tuba case through the narrow doors. Ben followed, slipping in just before the doors closed behind them. She plopped her tuba in a seat next to a window and sat down beside it on the aisle.
As Ben was passing by Audrey, she said, “Hey, sit over here,” and motioned to the seat directly across the aisle from her seat.
“Okay.” He sat down in the seat and searched for anything to say to her. The bus lurched forward and caused him to smash his forehead on the seat.
“Well here’s my stop!” she hoisted her tuba case out of the seat and shoved it out the doors, which closed behind her. The bus drove away in a cloud of diesel and anti-freeze. Ben stared through frosty window thinking at least he knew he would see her again tomorrow at precisely 7:27 a.m.
Audrey stood on the sidewalk for a moment, making sure that the bus was completely out of sight before she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out one of Ben’s index cards. The card said, “Hi, my name’s Ben, what is your name?” in bold letters, but underneath in small, faint letters it said, “I think you look like an angel. A tuba-playing angel.” Audrey thought that perhaps she could learn to like clarinets after all.


- - -
Leanne Gregg's most recent work has appeared in Bartleby Snopes and Used Furniture Review. She is currently a copy writer by day and the fiction editor at Literary Orphans by night.

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Author: Leanne Gregg

Contributor: Uzodinma Okehi

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The lanceolate rush of ruled lines, of sunsets, of inked suns setting in pencil, of minutes, hours and days, right to this point. The something of something, get it? The butyrate fuse. The eclectic substrate of this and that, of childhood, your little tragedies, and you’ve got nothing but mean-time consider it. The tension, as always is also music, a kind of bad poetry, while the drawing itself is still pure science, like numbers, hard to crunch . . .
And Sakura, if nothing else, I’ll take comics by titration drip, drip by drip, or that clack, clack of the wall-clock hands, in my ears and climbing like the roar of a hurricane. Sakura, what’s left but those comics I said I’d draw, those legends, and how legendary does it seem to imagine me here sitting in my long-john underwear, still drawing, but you’d know better than I do if I’ll ever make good on that promise. Not just the clock but the sound of my neighbors downstairs fucking, the tump, tump of the headboard, reminding me just how little things change. That headboard, the bare white walls doming in on me, the cold wind racing up against the bricks outside. What remains Sakura, is the same game of patience. Start with blue pencil, rule out the page, then, new sheet, break down the panels in ballpoint pen. Meanwhile, wars are being fought, empires are crumbling, people are out there falling in love and dying, dust to dust. Now back to the ruled board, rough out the figures. New sheet, work out the faces, the positions of fingers, details on draperies and guns, plan out the lighting—in fact expand this step to encompass life and death because of how long it takes, because of the agony in the countless sheets I draw all over then crumple up and toss to the floor. In fact Sakura, this is the only step, and my only night alive, night after night, and if you do ever think about me, this struggle is what I’d like you to remember . . .


- - -
Uzodinma’s favorite color is Aqua—no, Lapis. Or maybe Sky Blue. He still doesn’t own a cellphone...
(okehi@hotmail.com)

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Author: Uzodinma Okehi

Contributor: MARK SLADE

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Bobby saw the fiend peering out from behind the large magnolia tree. This happened on the playground at school. The fiend was tall, very thin with large, black bulging eyes and blood red lips. The fiend was staring at Bobby, digging its long black fingernails into the skin of the magnolia tree. Sap bled. The white gooey liquid ran down the fiend's spotty hand.

The night before the fiend had stood at the foot of Bobby's bed and watched him sleep. Bobby just covered his head and prayed the fiend wouldn't hurt him. It's safe to say Bobby didn't sleep much that night.

Earlier in the day, while standing in line for lunch, the fiend tripped Monica Brant. She fell hard on the lunch room floor, breaking her nose. Everyone standing in that line had to go the principle's office and explain what they saw. No one saw anything except for Bobby. He saw the fiend trip Monica and laugh a shrilly as Monica lay on the floor in a puddle of blood, wailing.

But that's not what Bobby told the principle.

He reiterated what the other children said.

Later, at the drug store, the fiend followed Bobby inside. Bobby made his way to the comic books for the latest issue of Detective comics. He looked around the corner and saw the fiend take four Hershey's candy bars and place them in the left pocket of his dingy jeans.

The fiend pointed at Bobby and laughed.

Bobby went to the counter to pay for his comic book, when the owner, Mr. Ranse, stopped him. He demanded Bobby empty his pockets in front of everyone in the drug store. Bobby placed a comb, chewing gum, a note from Linda Thomas (saying she had a crush on him), and ten dollars and fifty-two cents on the counter. Then, out of his left back pocket were four melted unopened bars of Hershey's chocolate.

Bobby hung his head as Mr. Ranse took the newest issue of Detective comics from him and escorted Bobby out of his store.

Bobby ran all the way home in tears. He ran upstairs past his mother and slammed his bedroom door. He flung himself on his bed and bawled non stop for an hour until he fell asleep.

His mother knocked on bobby's door. She asked if he was all right. He didn't answer.

She shrugged, went into the bathroom.

Looking into the mirror, Bobby's mother laughed shrilly, her large bulging black eyes danced with delight. Licking her blood red lips, she dragged her long black fingernails across the bathroom mirror.


- - -
I HAVE BEEN IN BURIAL DAY, BLOOD MOON RISING, THE RUSTY NAIL, AND WORDHAUS MAGAZINE.
I LIVE IN WILLIAMSBURG, VA WITH MY WIFE AND DAUGHTER.

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Author: Mark Slade

Contributor: C.J. Johnson

- -
Darren came home from work, anticipating, as he had all day, a cool, refreshing can of beer. Entering the kitchen, he whistled merrily as he opened the fridge.
There were 8 cans remaining from the 12 pack he'd bought the day earlier; he intended to finish them off tonight.
Scanning the few shelves inside the fridge, he stopped whistling and frowned.
Where the hell have my cans gone?
A note on the sideboard by the front door, left by his wife, informed him she had gone shopping and would be home roughly an hour after him.
So he couldn't ask her.
Where the hell had they gone?
He searched all the cupboards in the kitchen. He searched the large storage cupboard. He even looked in the freezer.
No cans.
He searched through the rooms of their one bedroom flat, one by one
No cans.
Lastly, he entered the bedroom.
He looked behind units and in drawers. He got down on one knee and looked under the bed.
No cans.
Pulling his wardrobe doors open, he sighed with joy and relief as he spotted his precious, and now warm, beer cans at the bottom of the wardrobe.
He carried them into the kitchen, frowning.
"Why'd the hell she put them in there?" he grumbled to himself.
An hour later, his wife arrived home with carrier bags full of shopping. He questioned her about his cans in the wardrobe the moment she entered the front door.
"So you found them okay then?" his wife said.
"I had to search high and low for ages. Why the hell did you put them in there?"
"Spot them easily when you opened the wardrobe doors, did you?"
"Yes," Darren replied haughtily. "I'm not blind."
His wife smiled at him. "Well you just remember that the next time you wake me up at quarter to six in the morning telling me you can't find your shirt for work when it's ironed and hanging right in front of your face."


- - -
My horror novel entitled Female of the Species is available to download now from Barbarian Books. Check out my Author page on Facebook for information on this and further novels.

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Author: C.J. Johnson

Contributor: Will Lawrence

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He was reminded of a moment in the fifth grade when, during lunch, while lonely and eating by himself, two girls took a seat across from him and bluntly questioned: “Why are you so ugly?”

Many of his current insecurities could be traced back to this instance, and over time he came to accept that he was not attractive; not a cover model or a sex symbol; not “eye candy.” Over time, he came to settle on the definition of himself as being a “face for radio, and voice for blogging.”

His natural response to those girls, so many, many years ago, remained a distant cavernous echo in his thoughts: “Why are you?”


- - -

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Author: Will Lawrence

Contributor: Marian Brooks

- -
Laura would rather sit through Chain Saw Massacre 3 D than spend an evening with Ted’s parents.

They’re creepy. His mother, Gertrude, seeks her reflection everywhere, even in puddles after a rainfall, totally unaware that she might be standing in a slow current of shit. She fairly oils her way across the floor as she approaches. Laura can imagine her mother-in-law with a silver cigarette holder between her fingers if only she smoked.

Ted’s Dad, Phillip, is a giant of a man at 6’6” with a voice to match. No one ever argues with Phillip. When he frowns, his eyebrows alone could sweep you up and into the dumpster behind the garden. To his credit, he is a world champion flosser. He has to bend his way through doorways. If only he didn’t bend once in a while.

Now they have come to spend the weekend with Ted and Laura and their teen-aged boys, Justin and Lewis. Laura disappeared into the kitchen as soon as she could, stirring plenty of rage into the soup. She calculated the number of hours until their departure – fifty-seven frigging hours. Of course, some of the time would be spent sleeping. Subtract sixteen hours and you have forty-one.

They last visited in May for Justin’s eleventh birthday. Gertrude complained that there weren’t nearly enough balloons and that the cake was a little stale. They gave Justin a golf umbrella. Justin does not play golf. Phillip slept through the whole affair.

The afternoon was spent catching up with who had died and whose children were, or should be, checking into rehab. The Wilson’s daughter was pregnant by that long-haired musician, Doug and poor Uncle Charlie, who once moved like a greyhound, needed a new hip.

Dinner and clean up would consume two hours leaving thirty-nine and so on and so on. Lincoln was playing at a local movie theater. It was over two hours long. “We’re getting somewhere,” Laura thought. Both of the kids wanted to see Skyfall and Ted, Silver Linings Play Book. Gertrude was on her way to a headache and so was Laura. At least they had that in common. They compromised and went to see The Life of Pi.

By the time they woke up the next morning, there were at least twenty four hours to go. Ted made his special blueberry pancakes. Gertrude was proud of him although she thought the coffee was too strong and the orange juice, too acidic. She asked her daughter-in-law what kind of fabric softener she used. “The sheets were like sandpaper,” she said. Laura snapped like a towel on the line in a high wind. She threw her utensils into the dishwasher without even separating them and marched out of the room.

Fortunately, Ted and Laura lived a mile away from one of the largest malls in America. Much time and money could be spent there. Phillip offered to stay home with the dogs. Besides he was convinced that there was a code embedded in the daily crossword puzzle and that he was going to discover it. Everyone else piled into the SUV. The silence was deafening. The boys headed straight for Model’s Sporting Goods to purchase Eagles hats. They put them on backwards and inside out and stood in line for over an hour at the Apple Store. They congregated at Friday’s and were about to head home. Gertrude insisted that she needed to pick up a rain coat at Nordstrom’s and an unmentionable item at Victoria’s Secret. She went in alone while Ted, Laura and the boys waited outside, mouths open.

Shortly after they arrived home, Ted’s parents announced that they were departing way ahead of schedule. All were surprised but not disappointed.

Ted, formerly a gymnast, hadn’t done a cartwheel for ten years. When his parents left, he performed two of them perfectly across the living room floor.


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Recently retired, Marian Brooks has just begun to write some short fiction. Her work has appeared in Thick Jam, Curly Red Stories, One Million Stories, Short Humour, and others. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband.

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Author: Marian Brooks