Posts Tagged ‘Night’

29
Feb

Home

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

The muffled voices from outside the closed door play behind every memory. The echoes of arguments filled my ears each night as I fell asleep. The stinging sliding down my face and the taste of salt along my lips fills me with comfort. My frowning face in the bathroom mirror, as I rinse the dried tears from my cheeks, is a clear picture of me. Home is a safe place. I feel safe behind those doors. I feel safe tucked in my bed. I feel safe as I cry myself to sleep. Home is the familiar noise of troubled souls.

From Guest Contributor Selah Mantravadi

31
Jan

Do Electric Cars Dream Of Beach Holidays?

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Is everything packed?

Yeah, pretty sure it is.

Want me to double-check?

I already checked every room twice, but if you want to be completely sure…

No, I trust you.

Shall we load then?

Is the battery charged?

I don’t know.

So you didn’t charge it?

Honey, if you don’t tell me to, I don’t.

You drove the car last, you should have known.

I hadn’t given it any thought. Sorry.

Do we have enough to get home?

No, I’m afraid not.

And what now?

We could stay an extra night, of course.

Shall we do that then?

Good idea.

From Guest Contributor Hervé Suys

Hervé (°1968 – Ronse, Belgium) started writing short stories whilst recovering from a sports injury and he hasn’t stopped since. Generally he writes them hatless and barefooted.

6
Nov

Former Glory

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

She sits in a worn wheelchair, slightly swaying to the raspy and sultry melodies playing on the radio behind her. Drunkenly sloshing the dark brown liquid in the bottle she’s nursed throughout the night. Her eyes are as heavy as her heart, drooping with sadness and weeping with grief. Taking another sip, she sighs as the liquid scorches down her throat. She hums along to the music, reminiscing times when she played the same syncopated rhythms on stage. Her knobby and wrinkled fingers dance in the air on her ghost piano while swallowing sobs, thinking about her glorious old memories.

From Guest Contributor Sa’Mya Hall

15
Sep

A Ladder To The Stars

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

For him the past was a story trove, for me it was a series of embarrassments that woke up and lingered like morning phlegm.

My brother tells another story on our porch. I notice how night falls earlier in mid-August. How the North Star rises off the horizon. How it calls me like a conjurer in an epic fantasy.

My brother will stay in this town and rise. He’ll talk about how the band played Forever Young at his graduation and he knew he was destined. But who will tell the story of that morning when I woke and wandered?

From Guest Contributor Dave Nash

10
Jul

Raise Your Voice

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

raise it as if your life depends on it. Your future too.

Scream if needed. Scream even if your voice cracks.

Don’t wait for help, help yourself.

Learn to survive, and remember,

the young neighbor who cries every night,

a distant cousin with a broken arm, a young girl on the bus, with bruised marks.

Remember the scars, the burns, the pain, the losses too.

Read the silence, the untold stories behind every closed door.

Then write a new story, draw a new picture,

paint your toenails red, wear a bindi, go out and shout

Shout until you are heard.

From Guest Contributor Marzia Rahman

Marzia is a Bangladeshi fiction writer and translator. Her writings have appeared in several print and online journals. Her novella-in-flash If Dreams had wings and Houses were built on clouds was longlisted in the Bath Novella in Flash Award Competition in 2022.She is currently working on a novella. She is also a painter.

5
Jul

Happy Trails

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

The wind in the woods sounds like a river. It whispers across my face, soft and sweet and holy.

Dave packs the tent and I roll our bed bags. Soon we’re hoisting packs, tightening straps, stomping the last of the embers from the night before. Remembering bittersweet songs, old stories, and the secrets we’ve left behind with the trees and the stars.

The day warms. A robin twitters. Cicadas hum in the pines. Dave whistles the Happy Trails tune as we start down the path. And so the end begins, and I clutch this small, quiet death in my soul.

From Guest Contributor Jayna Locke

14
Jun

Sentinels

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

With the heavens above, eyes perceive blackness below. The silhouettes of lonesome silos dotting a barren landscape gives way to perceptions of ancient obsidian obelisks, sentinels erected by the offspring of some long-forgotten civilization, sating deities of seasons past.

Against a moonless night, one can appreciate the unencumbered band of the Milky Way, glorious gold and white light from hundreds of thousands of stars, blues, oranges and reds, sparkling beacons of potentialities adorning the night sky.

I repose beneath a blanket of starlight, and the encircling melody of coywolves lulls me to sleep as I long for dreams of you.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

10
May

A Close Call

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

She traveled on a budget during her graduation trip. After getting off the train, she headed to a village near a scenic spot. It was dark when she arrived. She hoped to stay overnight with a peasant family.

A 58-year-old man passed and spotted her crouching alone on the road. He offered to let her stay over. He was too poor to afford a wife and believed it was his chance. He made her tea and put knockout drops in it.

As she was about to drink it, two travelers knocked at the door and asked for a night’s lodging.

From Guest Contributor Huina Zheng

Huina either coaches her students to write at work or write stories for fun after work.

8
May

Dreams In Green

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Standing here on this frigid night, I look out over a frozen landscape, and I can’t help but wonder why?. There is still hope. Maybe one day, this land will come back to life, the trees will grow, the water will flow, and the air will smell fresh and clean.

I can still feel the excitement coursing through me, the sense of wonder at seeing something so beautiful. The land of ice and snow holds a strange sort of magic.

But the land is not dead. It’s only sleeping, waiting for inspiration or something green to grow the days away.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

25
Apr

Love Hurts

by thegooddoctor in 100 Words

Sometimes I think I must have imagined that night. It was like one of those direct-to-video action movies with Bruce Willis or Nicolas Cage – blah blah, pow pow, and over in something under 90 minutes. We tugged at each other’s clothes, moaned each other’s names, rubbed, sucked, writhed. I was bleeding so severely afterward, my bottom lip split open, my eyebrow practically torn off, that I almost passed out. Instead, the world persisted in behaving recklessly, ringing the doorbell and then running off. I knew without knowing how I knew that all things were the same thing to the dark.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie’s newest poetry collection, Heart-Shape Hole, which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is available from Laughing Ronin Press.