The Rusted Swing Set by Sheila Good She folded the morning newspaper. Her old bones creaked as she stood leaning on the table for balance. Shuffling to the sink, she washed out her coffee cup placing it in the drainer. The sun was bright as she pulled the curtain aside checking out the backyard. The […]
Family Story
Delivery by Denis Bell
“It came out positive.”
“You’re kidding!”
It would seem so. The news was surprising to Ruth because Sandra was old. Not Betty White old, but easily old enough to be Ruth’s mom.
“What did Jim say?”
Hanging by Beaton Galafa
It came one evening when everyone else was sleeping. It crawled in the dark outside, hissing along the night winds that were shaking leaves and branches of the big mango tree standing tall a few footsteps from our house.
Helping Me Up by Bruce Ransom
“Are you going to be my new daddy?” she asked directly.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking down at the flowery dress squirming beside him on the edge of the living room couch. “I like your mom, but to get married you have to really, really like each other.”
Escape by Murdock O’Mooney
Escape by Murdock O’Mooney “We got to get out of here,” I tell her. She tells me she knows and that she’s waiting for the right time. “You saw what he did to Johnny- he’s got a black eye and fat lip… he’s all beat up.” She says that it’s none of our business. I […]
Daddy Dearest by Sue Buckwell
Daddy Dearest by Sue Buckwell My father was a psychoanalyst and instilled in me a fear of almost everything. Being a learned man, he also taught me the scientific names for each and every phobia I have amassed over the years. That one, for instance, is called polyphobia. My first memories are of the peculiar […]
A Friend Indeed by Sue Buckwell
A Friend Indeed by Sue Buckwell As brand new elementary school teachers, Faith and I bonded when we discovered, in mid-September, that we hated children and agreed that if we ever again encountered our respective high school guidance counselors, we would do them serious bodily injury for suggesting that we might be well suited to […]
ABOUT A LITTLE BOY AND A LITTLE GIRL by Hans Anderson
In a big town crowded with houses and people, where there is no room for gardens, people have to be content with flowers in pots instead. In one of these towns lived two children who managed to have something bigger than a flower pot for a garden. They were not brother and sister, but they […]
Brothers By SHERWOOD ANDERSON
I am sitting in my house in the country and it rains. Before my eyes the hills fall suddenly away and there are the flat plains and beyond the plains the city. An hour ago the old man of the house in the forest went past my door and the little dog was not with him.