Posts Tagged ‘Dark’
Jan
Snow
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
The town plow thunders by with its single headlight. You listen with your eyes squeezed shut, imagining the snow that touches everything—sliding under your mudroom door—powder dusting the floor. You’re warm, curled up in an igloo of quilts; yet, your nose feels cold. You know the woodstove burned out after the late news—only a lingering scent of smoke drifts up the backstairs. You wake, uncertain of the hour’s shade of blue, and look up at the white ceiling where a teensy black speck of a spider scales a silver thread, finding its way in this uncompromising dark.
M.J. Iuppa
Oct
Alice Falls For A Killer
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
She surmises blood stains under everything. His skin is cracked like hard dirt in a barren winter. “You could use baby oil,” she says. Later, they share a half-gallon of chocolate chip ice cream, her treat. They always meet by the railroad tracks because of his love of trains and exit signs. He speaks in fragments, and she imagines his past is dammed up, full of unexplained absences. She wants to show him her breasts under the moonlight. She wants to hear him whistle so shrilly it will puncture the dark. Then, the darkness will erase the both of them.
From Guest Contributor Kyle Hemmings
Oct
Reasons To Write
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Miguel was seated in front of the word processor, tears running from his eyes. The keys were making their poetic sound. Rhythmically putting letters into words, words into thoughts and ideas that moved things deep within his heart.
“You’re crying again,” Jenny said. “Why do you keep writing?”
“I don’t know,” Miguel replied. “I thought about not writing…”
“You really should.”
“I just think about how dark and painful my life was. Not having any way to get healthier with schizophrenia.” Sitting in the dark Miguel stared into the light. “I can’t leave anyone to fight this on their own.”
From Guest Contributor Steve Colori
Jun
The Change
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
“Watta you gonna do?”
“I don’t know.” It was getting dark.
“You could run away.”
“Where would I go?”
“California?”
“That far?”
“Or Mexico.”
“I don’t speak Spanish.”
“Then just give it back.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I already spent it on candy.”
His friend thought about that. “Can I have some?”
“I ate it all.”
After watching the traffic at the intersection for a while, the boy’s friend got up. “I can’t go to California,” he said apologetically.
“Why not?”
“I’m not allowed to cross the street.”
“Yeah,” the little boy still sitting on the curb admitted, “me neither.”
From Guest Contributor Jean Blasiar
Apr
In The Dark
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
“Sit down!” someone yelled.
“I need to find out what happened,” I yelled back.
“We were told to wait,” a woman insisted.
The stage went dark. My mind revisited twirling silks, accelerating swings.
“Pity she fell. A beautiful performer,” the man next to me said.
“She wanted to be a aerial trapeze artist since turning twelve,” I replied.
“Difficult to replace,” he added. “She was so talented.”
“Why in the past?”
“Because,” he said while checking the Internet, “It appears she may have…”
“It’s my only child,” I sobbed, rising to walk away from my seat.
No one stopped me.
From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs
Krystyna is a writer of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
Mar
My Darkest Colors
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
At night my darkest colors show. Sometimes I grow weary, afraid you can’t stand the glow.
Darkness comes in many different shades. From fear, paranoia, self doubt and anxiety, the lightness from me fades.
Just as self realization kicks in, and I ponder how much more can I take? A warm calm from light comes through, and my heart begins to wake.
As the light and magnitude begins to grow, the spectrum of colors from light to dark begins to glow.
I begin understanding now, so diverse and ubiquitous, and limited was my vision before. Forgive me I never knew.
From Guest Contributor Crystal Bauer Feldman
Feb
Layers
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Her mind acts as warden, keeps her in her room most days.
She confesses to me that one week straight, she huddled in the dark base of her closet. She had built a nest within, its four tight walls comforting her like an eggshell: no demands made upon her, no chance to fail.
I ask what she will need if she comes home. She cannot answer, and so I build a table with layers of blankets both over and under it, where, like the Princess, she can feel despair creeping in even if it is the size of a pea.
From Guest Contributor Laura Lovic-Lindsay
Nov
Light
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
You leapt forward with clear resolve. Left me standing in the dark.
I mull over your departure. Review circumstances. My mind turns somersaults, not being able to comprehend.
It wasn’t me, you once said. Not even us. You tried to resolve battles within you. Past demons colliding with ideals you set for the future. Hope slipping into a void.
I offered you help. You refused.
Into the darkness I stare. Light beams from afar. Tempts me to look into a future I can make my own.
I’ll open the door. Be on my way. Knowing you won’t travel with me.
From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs
Krystyna writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Her work has been published at: Nailpolish Stories, 50-Word Stories, 100 word story, 101 Words, Boston Literary Magazine, From the Depths (Haunted Waters Press), ShortbreadStories, SixWordMemoirs, and Espresso Stories.
Jun
Wavestar Bang
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
He lost her, but not as he thought: not to the cancer, or a car accident, or to some art student.
She was dancing alone to Wavestar in the dark, only the nightlight of the stove touching her naked toes, her knees, her swishing hips. She spun, hair whipping, neck caning, hands flying like children playing through the twilight air of the highway with the windows down, wrists like autumn leaves whose time had come.
She became transparent, translucent, spinning faster and faster, and glitter evaporated from the feet up, a tornado of silver steam.
He fell right through her.
From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat
After graduating with a BA in English from Vassar College, Brook landed her first paid writing job as a reporter for a small-town Colorado newspaper. She left it to travel to India, where she fell in love, got married and canceled her ticket home. She and her husband Gaurav write freelance articles for dozens of publications, including Outpost, Ecoworld and Little India. In 2013, they launched www.BluePlanetJournal.com, which she edits and writes for. She also teaches writing at a community college, is earning her MFA in Writing at Lindenwood University, and is writing a novel.
Feb
Milk
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
In the beginning, I cried for it. Yet each night after dark, I threw up that sour formula, that fake milk warmed in glass bottles my mother tested on her wrists, so I wouldn’t burn my mouth.
Still, my mouth burned. I was a difficult baby, thin and colicky. I hungered but could not accept nourishment.
That’s how I began: Born at just five pounds, brought home in a receiving blanket, placed in a crib where I protested and screamed, the vein in my neck throbbing.
Years later, I’m still protesting, still screaming.
It scares me to close my mouth.
From Guest Contributor Cinthia Ritchie
Cinthia is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee who writes and runs mountains in Anchorage, Alaska. Find her work at Water-Stone Review, Evening Street Press, Third Wednesday, Best American Sports Writing 2013, Sports Literate, The Boiler Journal, Cactus Heart Press, Mary: A Journal of New Writing, damselfly press, Memoir, Sugar Mule, Foliate Oak Literary Journal and other small presses. Her first novel, Dolls Behaving Badly, released from Hachette Press/Grand Central Publishing