October, 2018 Archives
Oct
The Eve Before Halloween
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
The eve before Halloween I visit Melissa’s gravesite and place a
bouquet of yellow roses against her stone. She’d be thirty years old
today. The cemetery is empty, and the rain is cold against my face, but
I am here.
“Hi, Sweetie. In honor of your favorite holiday, I’m having a Halloween
party and celebrating your birthday tomorrow. I wish you could be here,”
I say, tearing. I walk to my car briskly, the umbrella inside out from
the wind.
The rain becomes heavy and when I drive off, the petals of the roses
blow in front of my car.
From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher
Oct
Dandelions
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Passersby might have been forgiven for thinking the playground was host to a psychedelic staging of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, but it was just Cassie and Bobby, who’d rubbed dandelions on their skin until their faces were streaked with yellow. They wanted to camouflage themselves like the soldiers on TV, but all they had was mud and flowers and imagination.
When the real life soldiers came, Cassie and Bobby hid in the drainage tunnel as they’d been taught. The gunshots echoed like firecrackers in the air around them while they waited in vain for their parents to find them.
Oct
Kelp
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Life as a kelp farmer meant eating a lot of kelp. They said it was the most efficient source of nutrition known to humankind, but that did nothing to offset its blandness. If anything, knowing how healthy it was for you made it worse.
An entire industry had opened up around making kelp palatable to consumers. There were kelp salads, kelp chips, kelp sandwiches on kelp bread, even kelp burgers.
If it were up to Monica, she’d be doing just about anything else. But these days, there was only job, and that was harvesting kelp. So that’s what she did.
Oct
Three Imaginary Boys
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Three imaginary boys followed her everywhere. The one she called Whitey was the nicest. He would help her with math and comforted her when she was sad.
Churchill never had anything nice to say. He criticized her for crying too much and called her stupid whenever she made a mistake. He said the reason no one loved her was because she was a girl.
At least Churchill never hurt her, not the way Stephen did. He pinched her, or burned her with cigarettes. Sometimes worse.
She knew all three boys were imaginary, but the scars Stephen left were frighteningly real.
Oct
The Longest Honeymoon
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Their friends joked they were going to have the longest engagement ever. Others whispered the wedding was never going to happen. This seemed to bother Sophia even less than it bothered Gabriel. They were both extremely happy the way things were.
The wedding had become something they almost never talked about, only when their parents brought it up. These moments occurred less and less frequently as it became obvious Gabriel and Sophia weren’t interested. The suspicion became that one or both of them was getting cold feet.
Everyone was wrong. This wasn’t the longest engagement. It was the longest honeymoon.