Posts Tagged ‘Mother’
Aug
The Other Side Of Obsession
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Nothing was as he remembered. Not the walk, with the chipped and uneven flagstones, nor the dusty, desiccated garden, nor the house itself. The two decades had ravaged the property and Stephen immediately regretted its purchase.
As a youth, his mother brought him here on Saturdays. He’d sit in the chamber to the rear of the kitchen reading library books, hoping the owner’s children failed to notice his presence.
The Packards had long since moved on to a much more modern estate. It seemed he was still trying to catch up in a race only he knew they were running.
Aug
The Red Cardinal
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Mark sat next to his motionless mother.
“How is she doing today,” Mark asked the nurse. A red cardinal perched
on the window sill chirped.
“The same. Quiet and still.”
Mark opened his journal and wrote the date. He spent his time writing
happy moments with his mother rather than spending time on a novel.
“Mom, look. There’s a red cardinal, your favorite bird.” Sophia’s mouth
sagged, expressionless.
He sighed. “Mom, I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Mark left the room with a blank space in his journal. Alzheimer’s took
his mother away and he didn’t know how to endure the emptiness.
From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher
Jul
Conversation RIP (Killer)
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
There was furious silence in the booth from the women, mixed with a gauged suspension of opinion from the men.
Ginny, being invested, had expressed her dissatisfaction with the quality of man available to the unwed mother.
Kurt had provided a brutally frank answer. It hung in the air above the table like a phantasm.
To me, he’d drawled, a man willing to bring up another’s child born of selfish gratification – or conversely accept someone who’d aborted – wouldn’t think much of himself. Where’s the quality in that?
I wished the now red-faced Frank had given a brutally curt answer instead.
From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid
Feb
Stars
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
I sold myself like some cheap thing you find on sale in a store or in the market. It wasn’t until a year later I realized what I was made of: stars in our universe. I was one in a million of them. My mother wove my hair on a Sunday singing a song, then she told me, ‘Ola, do you know what you are made of?’ She smiled. ‘Stars in our universe,’ I said. I was broken, hurt, used, and thrown away, but I found my way back. I found my value, I found my peace, I found sanity.
From Guest Contributor Oghenemudia Emmanuel
Jan
Ned
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Ned woke with a sore head. The boys would be bailing hay, might have a spare half-one of whiskey for him. Still wearing yesterday’s overalls he yanked on wellie boots and moseyed along the pot-hole filled coast lane up to the farms. Fred and Slap-head saw him weaving in and out of the irritated cows. Sneakily Fred poured a laxative into his moonshine. Great craic!
After a few good slugs of the bottle Ned hobbled quickly through the gate back to his stone cottage. Aggie was furious. He didn’t make it to the outhouse. Her mother’s floral sofa was ruined.
From Guest Contributor Valkyrie Kerry Kelly
Dec
Thrill
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
“Not healthy,” Jan whispered to her surviving brother, peering into the darkened parlour where her mother sat, eyes fixed on the flickering screen of Brian’s cracked Smartphone.
Tom lifted and dropped his shoulders helplessly and returned to the closed-coffin wake in the other room.
Jan herself had only been able to watch the footage once: the glee of Brian hanging from a spar changing to terror as his grip had slipped.
The phone had been lucky enough to fall back onto the bridge.
Jan stared as her mother hit replay again. She’d even stopped sobbing.
“Friggin’ selfie generation,” she muttered.
From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid
Nov
Perfectionist
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
After his mother, it was his wife’s turn to chide him for his lethargy. Only a few of his good friends knew him to be a perfectionist. ‘You take a year to complete a chore’ was the common refrain muttered by his wife. His sweet talk on any given day always ended in a tiff. His wife, who envied the life of a butterfly, was fed up with him.
Unfortunately, he died suddenly of a heart attack.
A year later, in a drunken brawl, certain words slipped from two men, which led to the arrest of his wife for murder.
From Guest Contributor Thriveni C. Mysore
Nov
Salt Of The Earth
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Ian sits supping his pint, jotting down some verses in his notebook, his Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems at his side.
A mother and two twenty-something daughters take the next table. The menfolk, the husband and the boyfriends, arrive with the drinks.
They notice him briefly and he senses the usual smirks and rolling eyes.
But he’s soon forgotten as they immerse themselves in their hearty little world.
The men have large practical hands. Eavesdropping, Ian learns that the daughters are in sales and retail, respectively.
‘Salt of the earth’ he thinks sardonically, thanking God for poets and tortured souls everywhere.
From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher
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.
Jul
At The Lake
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Sitting in the sun with her friends at the lake, she hoped for Cannon Stevens to notice her, she hoped her mother wouldn’t notice her tan line, and she hoped she didn’t get burned.
Water hit her legs and she jumped up and ran towards Cannon who stood laughing in the shallows. Scooping water up with her hands, she splashed him and he grabbed her hands, his laugh turning into a silly grin.
That night, her mom flipped, “Bikini lines! Not on my daughter!”
Aloe couldn’t heal the cigarette burns on her stomach.
The lake water and Cannon’s touch did.
From Guest Contributor Tyrean Martinson
Tyrean is a daydreamer, believer, and writer who lives in the Northwest.