Chapter 1 The lead story on P3 of Saturday's Wheat Belt & Farming News, published six days a week in the town of Springwater (which accounted for only a third of the newspaper's regional sales averaging 51,470 per issue), screamed: 'Kisser Bateman to Return Home Tuesday on Lear Jet' The article mentioned that Mr Bateman, a former delivery boy on the WB&FN...
'My life is over,' I muttered, as the real estate agent led me up to the front door. Even for a redbrick old house in Newcastle it looked... rustic? Quaint? Shit. It looked shit. Beat-up and dirty, what was described to me as a 'front garden' was more a slab of concrete with a plastic chair and determined weeds reaching through the cracks. Even the outside...
Chapter 1 - Katherine It was early morning, very early indeed, but nature was calling. Paulo could not get back to sleep, not with that feeling and the accompanying stiffness. Indeed, that feeling and that stiffness. He opened his eyes and smiled up at the ceiling: had he a woman in his bed, a compliant or keen woman awake, or at least ready to be woken to...
Hello all! I'll keep this intro brief; enjoy. This is my first foray into writing a story. At least true if this is where you get the majority of your stories from. Been coming here for over 10 years and decided it was time. It's been a great experience so far. Thank you for reading! This is the first chapter in what I hope will be a very long series. I ho...
"Sarah?" shouted the voice, "Sarah, you in there?" It was Bruce! She ran to the door to see his smiling face pressed against the glass. She opened the door and saw that he had unbuttoned the jacket to show his broad torso covered in a blue denim shirt and the crash helmet and both panniers by his feet. "Was it ever hard to find you!" he laughed. "You sca...
The harsh white light of the interrogator's lamp dug into my eyes. As someone who spent most of his life hunched over a laptop screen -- ergonomics sounded like a problem for future Abby -- it wasn't quite as discomforting as the racist pukes from whatever government salad had decided to boot in the front door of my parent's house, throw around a bunch of of...
How did I get myself into this mess? There I was, leaned over the side of her bed, legs spread wide, bound and blindfolded. I could hardly move, could barely even squirm. She'd put these bondage cuffs on my wrists and ankles; ones that had metal fasteners to either be clipped together or restrained to something else. And restrained, I most definitely was....
As if the rumble wasn't distracting enough, the hot wind began to intrude on her thoughts as well. An endless ocean of sand flew by on the right as her nose braved the continuous assault of blighted streams, wheat fields, cattle herds, caravans along the road, and smelling worst of all, the natives in the outer coaches. It'd been days since they'd begun trav...
*Author's note: I recently received a request to write to a story about someone's mom who is raising three children on her own. I couldn't immediately come up with a storyline for the idea, so I shelved it without replying to the person who sent it. My apologies. When another idea for a story came to me, I recalled his request, and that brought to mind some...
White Buddha: Portrait of an ESL Teacher in China "Melvin..." "Where was he from?" "Portland, Oregon." "That's weird." "It's a weird place..." "But he hated Portland, like, really, really hated Portland, always shitted on its hipsters, and politically correct, passive aggressive people..." "He certainly was not passive aggressive." "Wasn't he...