Maybe I'm just stupid. Maybe that's the reason. I have to learn and relearn the same lesson over and over: Sometimes our dreams and goals spin around and bite us in the ass. I'm Chip Beaker. I'm in a lot of trouble. And it all started with that damn apartment. Way out on Santa Monica, it sat high over the street and glimpsed the big, blue Pacific, out ther...
As I took the long elevator ride down from my ex-wife's lawyer's office, I began to contemplate how at 42 I had arrived at that point in my life. With just our signatures we had ended 18 years of marriage. Of course in truth it was over well before I signed the formal document. The home we had built together had been sold weeks earlier. Our possessions had b...
Readers: Warning. This story takes a definite turn away from happy. Read at your own risk. * I woke up the following morning before my alarm clock went off feeling well rested. I shouldn't have been surprised really. The Fine Arts Presentation ended before nine, and Jesse's mother wanted him to go directly home. Without any opportunity to be alone, especi...
Marc pulled his suitcase into the parlor of Waverton with his eyes firmly on the Turkish rugs. Unable to manage a glance up at the carved grand staircase he had been thinking about for two months, he shuffled across the carpets towards the front desk. He should've canceled the trip and eaten the five hundred dollar deposit. "Reservation for Rosini," he gru...
Thanks for your kind words and encouragement! I am thankful for everyone who takes the time to read my stories. When I wrote the last chapter a year ago, they were going to Waffle House. This was before recent current events... I mean no disrespect by setting part of this chapter there. It's simply for the integrity and continuity of the story. For all int...
I quickly stopped at home, ran in the side door of the house and straight into the office. Breathlessly, I grabbed the folder of information - it was pretty much a brief of evidence, years of training for the old man is hard to break free of. The brief that dad had assembled for me was quite in-depth, from property prices in the area and surrounding district...
There really was a Lac du Miel in Lac du Miel. Once it had been wild and scenic and outside the city limits, but over the last couple of decades, what with the whole state sinking and the town expanding, town and lake had met and your view and access to it were obscured by a development called Honey Lake Estates. Houses started in the $120s and went up to Mc...
BUN-BUN: Everyone just looked at me like I was just so anomalous! It just made little sense to anyone how I managed to escape the Vault Matrix. It was very early in the morning, the sun probably ready to rise at any given moment. Beth sat down in front of me, the puzzled look on her face being just plain hilarious. "What the hell happened?" She asked, want...
A beam of sunshine filtered through the curtains in my room, hitting my eye and waking me. I rolled over, my head pounding from a previous night's heavy drinking. That's when I remembered. I'm staying at my uncle's place, the uncle I've not seen for decades and who I never really knew. The uncle who was letting me stay with him while I tracked down my dad,...
But now, Sean had experienced a new and thrilling sense of turning over control to another. And then, just as he had began to welcome this new thrill, before he could adapt to and embrace this new pleasure, it was over. And yet...something. . . something remained. Something deep inside him had been touched, a window or door had opened, a mere crack, then sla...