When first light reached over the hill and touched the far side of the lake, he pushed off in his little boat and rowed two-hundred feet out into the darkness. The water was calm. The night creatures chirped. The birds began solitary songs to greet the dawn. He could feel his breath crystalline in...
Read more →He was thirty-one with yellowing teeth and yellowing finger tips and he did not have any tattoos on his forearms, but he did have some thin, stylish, expensive round glasses perched on his narrow nose, over a thin face and scrub-covered chin. His drab blonde hair was short and a tad bit oily, except...
Read more →When the morning rain was pushed out by the cresting sun and a curtain of humidity fell over the plain, he had gone out to see about trimming some bushes down. He was middle-aged and portly, too large, but his face was long and narrow under his brown thin-brimmed cap. His overalls held everything...
Read more →When the screen door slammed that morning at 9:30 after breakfast, Gladys P. did not know what a painful, uncomfortable day her day would become. Neither did her husband. It was just another weekend in their summer cabin in the pleasant, quiet community up on the hill in the central mountains. The lodgings were...
Read more →A week after Will’s accident, the entire town turned out for a pep rally parade down main street and a celebration of life service in the high school gym, put on by several of his old high school teammates, several teachers, and two of his old team mothers. They had insisted. There was a...
Read more →When Jesse was 20, he had met Colin in a shop course at the college. Colin was a year his younger, and he was the kid brother of Will Martin- the Will Martin, who had set several district records in track and football as a ball carrier when he was in high school. Will...
Read more →When Mortimer arrived at the coffee house, he looked a the tinted panes spanning the front of it, and noticed the wind had lifted all the hair on the right side of his head into a sort-of hands-up position. His hair was like that, surrendering to the elements at the drop of a raindrop...
Read more →When he got off of the transport- an interstellar 10-speed that was an exact replica of the one he had loved to ride all around Indianapolis before it happened- an attendant in a white suit with a green tie met him visually, nodded, reached out for the bike, and pointed at the 20 pairs...
Read more →It wasn’t surprising it ended like that. Arlen had always been intrigued by the unusual and the immense. Instead of pushing cars across the living room floor, as a child he would constantly practice leaping from the top of furniture. As a five-year old, he once came home basted in grease after he found...
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In the spring, when the sky grew more blue than gray during the day and the snow in the high places began to melt and wake the water on the hillsides, little Udaya was told to watch her brother. In the early evening of the day before, Elan and Gopan had gone up into...
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In 1351, a year after the Black Death finally let go of the village of Nérac and its surrounding estates in southwest France, a gentle young monk named Colinus went through the ravaged region and collected every orphan he could find, bringing them back to live by his brothers in Orphan Hall. In a...
Read more →“You’ve made agreements”, Clarisa said. “You’ve made agreements, and you just keep them without thinking about it.” “What do you mean?”, Jennie asked her. “You made some agreements a long time ago, and they drive you around- like rules for certain truths in your head- and you don’t question them and they keep you...
Read more →Said the tree to the busy monkey, “I was wondering- why do you always come and hang out with me? I don’t go anywhere- or run, or leap, or fly- I only sway sometimes in the wind that comes by.” The monkey responded, “You don’t think at all about it, but… you feed me...
Read more →When 6PM rolled around, Arthur stretched and then took off his stained white apron as he walked out of the kitchen, and then out from behind the busy counter, and walked down the counter to the little hallway beyond it to his left. He brushed by a customer leaving the bathroom behind him and...
Read more →When the light began to fade and the night birds began to chatter and the whine of bugs filled the valley, the small old man shuffled out of the hut and began to walk his trail down to the water. The trail was clean sand and little round rocks, forgiving on his bare feet,...
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