Posts Tagged ‘Fence’
Jun
Thunderstorm
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
When I listen to the forecast, the weather calls for abundant sunshine and the day is anything but.
The sky is ominous and roars with thunder and lightning illuminating the yard. The fence is swaying, and I cringe.
My shih-tzu Benny is plopped under the kitchen table whining. I bend and pet his head. “Sorry, buddy. It’s a thunderstorm. Hopefully it’ll end soon.”
My coffee is cold, so I dump it into the sink and make another cup. While it’s percolating Benny comes out, barks, and wags his tail.
The sun has broken through the clouds.
Chemotherapy awaits after all.
From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher
Oct
Rationale
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Summer has been washed and hung to dry across the equinox. Quibble gathers the last of his alien friends for a farewell. To feast, they eat the neighbor’s two loudest dogs. Those dogs kept Quibble away at night barking at wishes and dreams. Quibble does not partake of the meat, but he imagines the joy the aliens conclude. At the end of the farewell celebration, the aliens open a portal between the shed and fence line and fall one by one through. Quibble only mentions the aliens when his neighbor tries to blame him for the disappearance of the dogs.
From Guest Contributor Ken Poyner
Mar
The Postcard
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
I sit in the beaming sunlight reading Tim’s postcard from France repeatedly.
“Callie, I met a beautiful French woman and we’re in love. I’m not coming home.”
My sweat drips onto the postcard leaving smudge marks. How could he do this to me? I’m so aghast, I throw the postcard on the grass and my dog Bentley whimpers as I kick the lawn chair across the yard, hitting the neighbor’s fence.
“Hey, watch it, Callie! You’ll break my fence,” Charlie yells.
Before I have a chance to answer, I look at the postcard and chortle. It’s full of bird excrement.
From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher
Feb
Outside The Box
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Annie is missing. “Not in her room,” Mom said. “Can’t find her outdoor
shoes,” noted Dad. “Maybe she fell into a humongous puddle,” quipped
younger brother. Older brother was silent. Two guinea pigs madly
threaded wheels. Crows lined the backyard fence squawking at the
house. “Bet she’s at a friend’s,” said Dad. “Maybe a monster snatched
her,” younger brother grinned. “That’s enough young man,” asserted
Mom. “We need to think OUTSIDE the box,” Dad stated. “Maybe someone
put her INSIDE a box,” giggled younger brother. “Hush!” yelled Mom.
Older brother emerged: “Annie’s in my bedroom closet with an imaginary
friend.”
From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs
Krystyna writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
Nov
Of Weak Spots
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Summer holidays meant wagon rides and a delicious break from school.
On the run for letting the poultry loose, my brother and I were making a hidden treehouse.
Later, we would have gone to the bank, devoured stolen nuts, nailed floorboards, as punishment. Together, we would have made jokes. Of weak spots on the fence and Granddad!
However, the treehouse being too feeble, our hands slippery from juice, hearts too unwilling, he fell to death.
Standing on the desolate bank, I glance at the familiar walnut blooms at Johnson’s. I wonder how we never discovered the weak spot in life.
From Guest Contributor Swatilekha Roy
Aug
Clothesline
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
“Something landed in our yard,” I announced.
Harold unlocked the backdoor, glanced around.
“Softball,” he hollered. “Next door thugs peering over our fence.
Undies on their clothesline again.”
“I’m cooking. How about returning the ball?”
“Nope. They know where it is,” Harold grumbled holding a newspaper.
When the doorbell rang, he answered. Two boys asked permission to
retrieve their ball.
“Nice kids. Better than the previous neighbors. Remember, they hung
sheets on that silly clothesline to avoid talking with us.”
I looked out the kitchen window.
Our neighbor had taken down the underwear. Sheets strung the length of
the clothesline.
From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs
Krystyna writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
Jan
Window Towards The Barn
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
She consoles the dust for being lonely. The rust for being needy. The rot for becoming unstitched by rain. It is easy to whisper these things on the day of rest. When even birds decline seeding and bees stay inside hives. There was little moving in the sparse outside, save a cat prowling between an empty peach bucket and a splintered fish pole leaned against fence rails, its frayed point vanishing in the tale’s middle.
She sits with tears on her cheek. Cheek on her hand. Pinkie finger tracing glass. Watching her three level acres all forlorn, infertile, sour, outworn.
From Guest Contributor Catherine Moore
Catherine is the author of three chapbooks including “Wetlands” (Dancing Girl Press, 2016). Her fiction appears in Tahoma Literary Review, Illinois Wesleyan University Press, Tishman Review, Mid-American Review, and The Best Small Fictions of 2015 anthology.
Nov
I Stole A Baby
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
And I’m sorry. I stole a blue-eyed toe-headed overalled emptiness because I
Just couldn’t help myself. She was climbing a fence, she was smelling a tree. She was a whip snapping wet wings. She was a sky that could hold anything.
I fed her square meals of television, eggs, and ambition, served rare. She ate the garnish, grew smaller and smaller until she was gifted and talented—pretty new scales, shiny black shoes worth the pinch. Now it’s not clear whether, if I keep tightening the belt, she will ever be able to disappear.
In my defense, I love her.
From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat
Brook holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University. She teaches college writing and is the co-owner and chief editor of BluePlanetJournal.com. Her nonfiction, poetry, and flash fiction have appeared in Creations Magazine, Little India, Outpost, Nowhere Poetry, and The Syzygy Poetry Journal.
May
The Land
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Matthew leaned against the chain-link fence and looked out at the land which had once been his family’s land. Now a housing development was being built on it where the bountiful trees had once stood.
He had listened to his grandmother talk about that piece of land as if it was a fantasy that she could never quite believe was real. He sold it immediately after his father’s death.
Overcome with guilt and shame he stood there next to the fence for a while trying to remember what the land looked like years before but he just couldn’t picture it.
From Guest Contributor Zane Castillo
Apr
After Midnight
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
After midnight, we climb the cemetery fence.
The sky is black as ink, but Gordy’s brought a flashlight. He’s been out of juvie for two days now.
I follow him to the far corner of the plot, wind brushing my clothes like ghosts.
“This is it,” he says.
His dad’s name is on the headstone along with this year’s date, him having died while Gordy was locked up.
I’ve seen the stripes on Gordy’s back, his broken nose, of course, but when Gordy takes out a sledge hammer, winding up, I grab his arm, saying, “Do that and he wins.”
From Guest Contributor Len Kuntz
Len is a writer from Washington State, an editor at the online magazine Literary Orphans, and the author of I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE AND NEITHER ARE YOU out now from Unknown Press. You can also find him at lenkuntz.blogspot.com