Posts Tagged ‘Curse’
Mar
The Angry Camper
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Stuart had a heart transplant last March and felt lucky to sit around a campfire with Paul.
The drunk from the next campsite stumbled over again. “Stop all that damn noise!”
Paul stood and yelled, “Look buddy, we’re just talking. No way you can hear us.”
“Stop banging on those drums. Next time I’ll have a twenty-two.”
“Call 9-1-1, Paul.”
Twenty minutes later they heard all the commotion of the arrest.
“You guys gonna be on the news,” said the park ranger. “That guy was wanted for the murder of Alex Edmund.”
Shocked, Stuart said, “Alex Edmund was my donor.”
From Guest Contributor E. Barnes
E has works in The Purple Pen, The Haven, Spillwords, Centina Pentina, Entropy and the anthology NanoNightmares.
Jul
Raking Leaves
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Raking leaves
is an exercise in the good-enough.
You will never get them all.
You come to prize
the strong, steady stroke of the rake,
the appropriate armful that you lift
into the waiting wheelbarrow.
The maple leaves which from a distance
appear two-tone, red and silver,
reveal a soul-satisfying palette
from crimson to lavender.
A leaf falls in your hair and tickles your neck.
You cover the lily beds
with their winter blanket,
a gorgeous quilt
in five-pointed patchwork.
You’re no good at quilting, but it doesn’t matter.
Raking leaves is an object lesson
in Lamott’s “shitty first drafts.”
From Guest Contributor Cheryl Caesar
Cheryl lived in Paris, Tuscany and Sligo for 25 years; she earned her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne and taught literature and phonetics. She now teaches writing at Michigan State University. Last year she published over a hundred poems in the U.S., Germany, India, Bangladesh, Yemen and Zimbabwe, and won third prize in the Singapore Poetry Contest for her poem on global warming. Her chapbook Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era is now available from Amazon and Goodreads.
May
Senseless Dreams
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
We’re speeding in Mama’s 1955 Chevrolet Bel-Air. Mama’s talking about new names we’ll concoct. Lives we’ll live.
“It’s a movie,” she says, smile crooked. “Our lives. We can be anyone. Romanovs, if we want. People of privilege.”
I think of him. Proclaiming Mama hysterical, a dreamer too much into writing and other subversive things. He threatened to have her committed. I think of Mama and me packing late at night, holding on to each other.
“It’ll be fine,” Mama says. “He can fuck himself.”
We need plans, not senseless dreams. But she needs to believe. So do I.
“Yes, Mama.”
From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri
Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, 50 Word Stories, (mac)ro (mic), and Ariel Chart.
Apr
Abracadabra Universe
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
I got to tell you, what a computer thinks a man looks like, adversarially evolved hallucinations, is the kind of shit that wears me out. But, apparently, it isn’t the kind of shit that wears most other people out. Their focus is just too taken up with acquiring the essentials – liquor, guns, toilet paper, travel bottles of hand sanitizer – for them to ever notice the heart lying in rags at their feet, or the African monkeys rafting across the Atlantic, or the shrill, jangly sound in the background that can be variously translated as “hello” or “goodbye” or even “peace.”
From Guest Contributor Howie Good
Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.
Jan
Blessed Curse
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Near dawn a rooster crowed.
“Mary died,” the midwife said, “I couldn’t save her, but you have been blessed with a baby boy.”
John pounded the table with his fist and with a heave, overturned it. The cup and saucer clattered to the floor while the wails and cries of an infant traveled from the other side of a closed door.
“God why did you take her?” he keened.
The midwife returned from the other room and placed the tiny child into his arms.
John prayed the baby would die. His life would be worthless without Mary. Damn the child.
From Guest Contributor Catherine Shields
Nov
Wild Geese
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Geese rise from campus soccer field, into falling evening. Wings flutter in unison. No stragglers.
You should be on the way home. But you watch, transfixed, weight of homework, aloneness sliding from consciousness.
The geese honk, harsh, soothing, moon on their wings. You like to think it’s joy, that they sense the vastness of unfettered space. They don’t give a fuck about the observers and voyeurs below.
You wish you could join. Fly, part of a team. They fly farther and farther, still calling. Don’t look behind.
All too soon, night engulfs them. You stride home, feet heavy, treading constraint.
From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri.
Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. A recipient of two Honorable Mentions from Glimmer Train, his story, “Strangers,” was nominated for The Best Small Fictions. His work is forthcoming or has been published in Microfiction Monday, Unstamatic, Maudlin House, Door Is A Jar Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.
Dec
Let It Snow
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
The endless snow was really starting to get to him. With every slippery step, he cursed silently through the scarf wrapped around his mouth.
He saw a woman with an oversized hat and coat moving toward him through the snow. She looked up at him with snowflakes on her face and gave him a large smile.
“Let it snow, let it snow,” She said in a singsong voice while walking past him. He stared at her in complete surprise.
Her singing continued as he watched her plod away. He shook his head in disbelief but could not help but smile.
From Guest Contributor Zane Castillo
Aug
Skin
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
In the weeks after her mother died, Pamela had no skin. Everything was surface—every twitching nerve, every gush of bile. When Creepy Carl told her to smile as he dropped off his rent check, her lips peeled back to the bone.
At home, she told Ben: I know about the girl you’ve been fucking for the last four months. Your intern. In our God damn bed.
Come on, baby, he said, it wasn’t like that.
But it was. She wouldn’t have her raw insides sheathed in lies. She slept in the guest room, on top of the blankets, oozing resentment.
From Guest Contributor Carrie Cook
Carrie received her MA in Creative Writing from Kansas State University and is currently living in Colorado. Her work has appeared in The Columbia Review, Midwestern Gothic, Menacing Hedge, and Bartleby Snopes.
Feb
Happy
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
When I was twenty, I had a friend who worked as a bartender. I remember that he hated sports, but that he learned to talk sports in order to get through his nights behind the bar with some civility, and of course to earn tips. And that is how I get through my life, by acting like I give a shit about things that I could care less about, by going through the motions. It generally works pretty well for me. People think that I’m a nice guy. Some have even gone so far as to think that I’m happy.
From Guest Contributor Les Bohem
Feb
La Piedra
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
I was once asked a question. In fact, it was the most important question in the history of the world.
The question was so immense that it should have been saved for God himself in the afterlife.
It covered love and hate and fact and fiction and everyone and everything at once.
Naturally, I wanted to answer, but my throat froze and my eyes turned to stone like those of a statue. If my heart throbbed, I wasn’t there enough to feel it.
Honestly, how’s a piece of shit like me supposed to know if everything happens for a reason?
From Guest Contributor Branko Tubic