1. When I try to make these memories come to the surface, it's as if I'm looking at a picture only half developed. Even the feelings are lost, fragmented, blurry around the edges. Nothing is sharp any more. Nothing has tangibility. Solidarity. Even faces sometimes elude me, drifting in and out of my consciousness like visions from dreams, occasionally defi...
Colette rolled out of bed, still exhausted, at six in the morning. Working at the inn was hard and she kept long hours, but she needed the money. She spent some of her savings backpacking through Europe, and by the time she ended up in the English countryside, she was keen to find a job. The inn, owned and managed by the motherly and overbearing Molly, was o...
This is a Halloween contest entry. Read, enjoy, and of course vote! * I had always enjoyed doing this, especially when I had a setup as sweet as this. I'd done a lot of haunted houses over the years, but this one had to be one of the best for Count Dracula to pick his victims. Picture a long narrow hallway with a small trail of tracer type Christmas li...
Next morning Tony wakes abruptly. Looks up to see Jill standing over him with a coffee in hand, dressed for work already. "How did things go with Anna last night?" she says, peering at him intently. "Oh. What do you mean?" Tony hesitates. How much does she know? "I mean, was she ok when you took her home?" Jill says. "That's all." "Oh," says Tony. "Yeah....
I had met Ryan through a friend; another fuck buddy actually. I was recently divorced and after years of sexual repression, I was finally at thirty-five sowing the wild oats that most people do in their twenties. The last fifteen years had been about being the good Christian wife; a role which I found stifling and unfulfilling. But fifteen years married to a...
*** When you pass a theater in New York, late on a warm summer night, you see the audience spill from the lobby blinking like animals fresh from hibernation, unfamiliar with this world, still living in a dream. *** Mandy said she needed to get out. The apartment walls were closing in, she said, like that scene in the P...
As someone who seemed to spend half of his life living out of a suitcase, Jeremy Swan had come to prefer staying in hotels with a bit of character. Over the past two or three years, he'd stayed in a former monastery, a converted foundry, a small castle, and an 18th century granary. And, on the whole, they had each turned out to be a lot more enjoyable than a...
April and Alex wake up at about the same time in the middle of the night and they tell each other what they were dreaming. +++++++++++++ April's Dream In my dream, I was napping in our bed when you peeked your head in the door which startled me awake. As I opened my eyes, I could see the sweat on your brow and your reddish tan from being in the sun. A sof...
Rachel had been working in the office for nearly three weeks. She was overly conscientious in her duties, wanting to make an impression. She wasn't our first choice or even our second. The others turned us down and now we were stuck with Rachel. I watched her as she typed, the tip if her tongue occasionally appearing between her lips. She had decorated the a...
I caught him browsing men's jeans with a smile. I smiled back. I didn't see him come in. I decided to park the empty rack by the jeans and "set up shop" there. I would basically remove any non-men's jeans that got stuck in this men's section. He held up a pair of plain black jeans, something we both like. I caught him smiling at me again, and so I returned t...