She knew she had to run from the beatings, the bruisings, the blood and brutality. After all, the police were on their way, and being arrested was not an option.
Too much snow
Spring came. Only then did she remember that there was a season apart from winter.
Friends for Life (and Death)
And on the last weekend of every month he would go and spend hours upon hours with his friends.
Friends, who though dead, were good friends still.
Unconditional Love
Daddy never answered when I called, so mommy bought me a doll that resembled him and a box of pins I stuck in it to keep track of the times he didn’t answer. I still love my daddy, even though police found him in his rented room lying in a pool of blood from the small holes riddling his body.
Confession
All the other nuns assumed she had joined them because of a shared devotion. She later confessed it was simply because she hadn’t realized that the last man who asked her to marry him would be the last man who asked her to marry him.
Sentencing
The judge read out the sentence. It was four words long.
The politician
The candidate, caught out in the scandal,read from his prepared speech. “I have nothing to say but that I have nothing to say and I can see no point in telling you that there is no point in telling you this.”
Welcome to Dodge
Stale smoke clung greedily to stained cream walls, ineffectual fans spun lazily at disjointed angles, failing to disturb the miasma. Welcome to Dodge
Status Quo
He loved their sex life. She loved her rabbit.
A Simple Wish
I wished, the crying in the middle of the night would stop and it did. The laughter stopped too, but the scent of baby powder still clings to my arms.
The Less-loved
When her childhood crush informed her he was getting married, she felt devastated until he added: “We’ve been together so long, I feel like I owe it to her.” Suddenly, she felt very sorry for his fiancée.
A Vulgar Pun
Ah, masturbation. You can’t beat it.
Apocalypse Love
Ominous radioactive clouds reflect in the ocean under the full moon. “Kiss me, this is it,” I say, and love grows like our cancerous cells.
Two
This is a two-sentence story. It has two sentences.
Duality
I know I am two persons, but the mirror shows only one. Am I crazy or am I dreaming?
Can’t Pull the Wool Over Her Eyes
Stalker donned sheepskin. Susie cried, “Wolf.”
—John H. Dromey
The End
It was both a gift and a curse that I was with her when she took her last breath.
I truly wanted to be there to comfort her in her last moments, but those empty dead eyes will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Look-alikes
We hadn’t seen William in at least two years when we went to pick him up at the train station, and we were killing time waiting for him by pointing out weird people we saw. I was doubled over with laughter having identified someone who looked exactly like William if he became a crazy, disheveled mathematician ten years from now when my friend Nicee gently touched my arm and said, “That is William.”
Misunderstood
He made a new kind of game with his wit and intellect. Then he made loopholes when nobody could follow the rules.
Remembrance
As he lit the flame, he hoped his smell would linger over her house like an obstinate cloud and infuse itself into every inch of her surroundings.
It was, after all, the only thing she had ever liked about him.