"I see that brooch you've been wearing," Estelle hissed. "Warren gave that to you, didn't he?" "Why, yes. He is so sweet." "Giselle, you hussy! If you thought there was a chance in hell I'd be leaving any time soon, why, you're sadly mistaken. Wild horses couldn't get me out of this house." "Well, my …
Tag: short story
Whatever the Kids Want
It was Sign-Up Day at Meriweather High School, and the armored trucks were lined up outside. Everyone was excited. Everyone would change. The ballplayers would get stronger and run faster. The board scores would improve. The future would be better in every way. The cheerleaders would get cheerier. The teachers would get teachier. Some called …
The Golden Time
I'm holed up again, writing. The weekend was exciting -- a memorable high school game, Bristol night race, up late both nights writing about them, and then restless afterward -- but I'm back in the routine of work on a short story, write a blog, pay some bills ... ... And, on selected days, I …
The Inside Dope from Halford
This is kind of a writing exercise. I decided I'd exercise my dialogue muscles by writing a short story that tells the entire story in the form of conversation. In this case, most of it's on the air. "It's Springfield Dynamos baseball, live on Oldies Ninety-Seven from Auckland Mosaics Ballpark in Halford. I'm Lamar Bridgman, and …
Comforts of the Distant Past
Nothing was a surprise, but everything was awful. A man gets a sinking feeling, knowing he's doomed, that he's making too much, and his age makes him cost too much, and the company gets to where it makes his life miserable for a while, hoping to run him off, and then it finally just lays …
An Open and Shut Case
As husbands went, Layla could have done worse than Preston Cranstern. The sex was good. He was, by most accounts, competent at his job. He had some annoying facets to his personality. For instance, Preston had an absurd habit of insisting he was right when he obviously wasn't. Once he had asked her to proofread …
Personalized Treatment
Most Mondays were the same. Olin Hampden was accustomed to it. Minor crises took up as much time as major ones. The wife of the president of Hortense National Bank had a fender bender; she had backed her Escalade into the back of a Nissan that was backing out of a space behind her at …
Nothing Left to Lose
On Saturday morning, I was riding around and around my front yard on a mower, listening to Charlie Robison’s “Desperate Times.” That’s where this dark tale started. Joe Scharmann had applied for dozens of jobs. Three had deigned to invite him for interviews. Those whose job it was to conduct the interviews knew better than …
A Selfie Portrait
This morning I started fooling around with this laptop -- okay, this is a tablet linked to a keyboard -- and I started tinkering with the Fresh Paint app that came with it. As you may know, sometime in 2014, I started drawing simple sketches to illustrated my short stories here and the blogs at …
Ruination
Sipping a cup of coffee, Haney McGee thought about Ebby Newlin, the old man who didn’t drive a car, worked his whole life at a gas station without ever running one, and looked out for the kids from the wrong side of the tracks. Haney had been in Denver, trying like hell to keep …
Nightrider's Lament 