Chapter 1: Genesis The lab was dark and dank. It sparked and crackled as an old man wearing a white lab coat fiddled away at his latest contraption. It resembled a sphere the size of a basketball, it was grey in color. He finds pride in it as its completion grows closer and closer, he holds it up to illuminate its presence in the moonlight. Its bright silve...
Author's note: This is the second part of a two-part series of stories in the fourth semi-annual Jake Rivers Invitational, this one based on country-and-western songs. This story is based on John Prine's "Angel From Montgomery," as sung by Bonnie Raitt. It picks up after Rosalie, describing her first true love to her recently-heartbroken granddaughter, tell...
They say the truth is stranger than fiction. Well, what occurred to me was so unexpected and foreign to my world that I thought I must have been dreaming, but I wasn't. Cynthia and I had been married for 22 years, we had two teenaged boys, and we both worked in the same large manufacturing company. She was 44 years old and was a supervisor in the Accounting...
Benny McShea had made his first million by the age forty one, his second at forty five. His success was a surprise to many, especially to some of his old teachers who had given him up as just an idle time waster and a dreamer. But Benny was a self made man, now a millionaire having set up an import export business from just the seeds of a dream. It wasn't al...
Both Mum and I knew that deep down Roger didn't really want to sell-up, so after a very long discussion it was agreed that the three of us would convert the house into 3 apartments, Roger could then stay put and rent out the other two in order to supplement his pension. For convenience Mum and I decided to stay at Roger's place whilst the conversion took pla...
Chapter I - Prelude Yareah, one of the oldest cities on earth, became quiet. A hushed stillness as dusk came over it, the brilliant sunset fading fast. But a new brightness came from the east, and illuminated the sky and the dark clouds in the distance. The thousands of the city heard a distant thunder, and held their breath to listen, wondering if they mi...
That Evening Sun By Chas4455© I've got a cane bottom rocking chair, one of four actually, that sits on the veranda looking out across the dirt road and a seemingly endless vista of green cotton fields. I'm sitting here with a cold PBR in one hand, and mindlessly stroking an old dog by my side with the other. Lady is about thirteen now, and doesn't do much...
I listened to the voice on the phone. It was a voice from the past. Ted Winslow and I had been room mates in college and now he wanted to come for a visit. Ted had just recently been divorced and he was in town applying for a job with a company he had a good chance with. They had set up a meeting on Thursday for him and he wanted to see his old college chum....
I'm one of a dying breed most folks would say. My name is Randy, I'm in my early forties, and I've been a handy man ever since I suffered an emotional collapse due to stress in the sacred halls of justice nearly 10 years ago. I've always been good with my hands so this seemed to be the logical transition. To wit: Law to labor. Anyway, I received a phone ca...
I had been in a fundamentalist church for fifteen years. I played by all the rules, looked like Clark Kent and now I was kicked to the curb by Interpolitical Nepotism. I lost my position with the church that I had built up so remarkable in the last five years. I was floored when my wife, Jan, said she wanted to stay in the church that double crossed her hu...