Tag Archives: Life

Short Fiction for Guests of the WordFeeder
Sunday, March 21, 2010

Emma Warner got off late from work that evening and went directly to the mall, to shop, to pick up a watch she’d left off for repair a week ago, the expensive one she wears to weddings, and because it was worth it to put off going home to an empty house. Pushing hard on the outer door, Emma looked around. It was dark. She’d parked as close as she could to the front of that one department store that was particularly well lit, but she still had a way to go and the lot wasn’t as full, wasn’t as busy as it had been when she arrived.

Her cell phone rang just as she was stepping off the curb, a distraction she didn’t need. “Hello? ..Oh, hi. …Yeah, I’m fine, really. ..I’m just leaving the mall. ……………Are you sure it’s him? ……I see. ..So you think tonight’s the night? ..Me, too. …..Yeah, those cookies are good. …Alright. …..Yeah, okay. ..Bye.” Sliding her phone back into her coat pocket, she reached below it to grab her keys, pressing the open button to flash the taillights of her car and to make sure the door was already unlocked when she got there. Opening the door, she shoved her shopping bags across her seat, over the gearshift, sat down quickly and locked her doors.
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Short Fiction for Guests of the WordFeeder
Monday, March 15, 2010

“Hey. My name is Daryl. Ever since I was a little kid, my parents have known I was special. Somehow, I was born with a natural sense of how people and events relate to each other, with an overview and a sense of anticipation that are uncanny for their accuracy, and flat out spooky in the way they enabled me to manipulate other kids and my parents. (Sorry Mom and Dad. I love you, but I am what I am.)”

“As it turns out, I’m even better working with perfect strangers. It’s not so much deception that I practice… Anyone can lie. .. as it is the patience and skill with which I come at a problem, from a distance. In fact, so remarkable are my abilities, the things I do and the way I do them have become known as…

Ripple, in case you haven’t guessed, is my family name. Need help? Ask around. No one does word-of-mouth better than me.”

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Short Fiction for Guests of the WordFeeder
Wednesday, March 10, 2010

“Hey! Get a lane of you own, buddy. …Unbelievable. They’ll let just about anybody drive.”

“Hmm.” Dead stop. “..Beep, beeeeeeppp!!” John was never reluctant to sit on his horn, however obnoxious. He didn’t care. He was going from A to B, and everyone else was just getting in his way. Behind the wheel of his faded, once electric red two-seater, he had the selfish independence of a… of a three year old. It was all about him.
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Short Fiction for Guests of the WordFeeder
Sunday, March 7, 2010

“Okay, before we get out…”

Mindy’s father released his seatbelt, slid forward and turned to talk to his daughter through space between their bucket seats, while her mother just sat there, staring straight ahead impatiently, both hands on her pocketbook in her lap, waiting for her husband to make the obligatory parental… No, strike that. …his obligatory fatherly remarks. If it was up to her, the mother, she’d have been out of the car and bought one already. Mindy, one hand on the door handle, did her best to be attentive and to take her father seriously, pushing her glasses up on her nose with the forefinger of her left hand.

“…You’ve done great in school, really great.” Mindy smiled at the pride she shared with her “Daddy,” which was what she still called him, most of the time, unless there were other people around. Your mother and I were going to wait until you graduated next year, …”
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Short Fiction for Guests of the WordFeeder
Sunday, February 7, 2010

It was two hours, forty-two minutes after they had met at the mid-life crisis pickup bar down the street. He was the married father of two children. She, so it appeared to him, was a single woman, in town for a few days on business, looking for someone at the end of a long day. Or maybe she was a call girl. He didn’t really care as long as he could afford to pay her without his wife finding out. He wasn’t bad looking. She used to be beautiful, and would have been now were it not for something about her eyes that would have caused a more careful man to think twice about taking her to bed.

In the hotel room he’d paid for in cash – his wife at their home in the suburbs thinking, because he told her, that he was working late, hoping, but not really believing that he was telling the truth – Ed was sitting up in bed, propped up against two overly soft pillows, his hands curled too tightly over the sheet and blanket he’d pulled up to his waist, his eyes looking straight ahead at nothing. Rose, the name she had given him, was sitting naked on the edge of the bed, facing the open room, pressing with her hands on the top of her legs to extend her chest, her eyes closing for just a moment.
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Short Fiction for Guests of the WordFeeder
Sunday, January 23, 2010

“Hey, Mom!”

“Hi, honey. You sound like you’re in your car.”

“Yeah, we’re on the road again.”

“Hey, Mrs. Nunzio!”

“Jessie says ‘Hello,’ Mom.”

“Sure. I heard her screaming.”

“Where’s Dad?”
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