Posts Tagged ‘Night’
Aug
A Night On An Empty Skywalk
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
The skywalk at the Santa Cruz railway station which connects SV Road in the west to the highway in the east was empty that night. He took his time to walk eastward, each slow step was counted so as to not reach shelter too quickly. Sleep was not cheap.
On the eastern end, another man was on the run from the police with a gun in his hand, having outdone the police. The emptiness of the skywalk seemed like the best possible thing. He could make his escape. Only then he saw a well-dressed man walking lethargically on the bridge.
From Guest Contributor Debarun Sarkar
Aug
Woman In Silhouette
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
I still remember the night when you left me, air thick with mist, the full moon hanging low like a moth in a tomb of cobwebs. Your deceitful voice was floating like paint fumes, stretching through the void.
«Don’t worry, honey. I’ll be back in a bit,» you said, kissing my forehead with stone-cold lips, smoothing my braids with moist and stiff hands.
Time has swallowed hundreds of full moons ever since, its belly round and black, cradled my sleepwalking heart, watched your features fading away from my memory. Now there’s nothing left of you but a woman in silhouette…
From Guest Contributor Cristina Iuliana Burlacu
Jul
End Of The Line
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Grace ran her finger over the word.
TERMINATED
She over-pronounced each syllable. The word crashed off her computer’s screen. The “t” chipped the floor with its hook. The “e” cracked the tile, and the rest of the letters tumbled into the void.
“Didn’t tell me in person.” The night beacon, bedroom clock blinked 11:15.
In her unkempt kitchen, she knelt beside the sink. Ants crawled, a living chain of perfect order. They bypassed her bait. Scouts explored on. Workers followed trails through the cracks. But in the hive, the queen risked nothing.
Life balanced on the pinhole of a hilltop.
From Guest Contributor Embe Charpentier
Jul
English Ivy
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Flamboyant scarlet blossoms arched twisting, winding heirloom English ivy. An
unexpected downpour ignored by the water-soaked guests. Whitewashed mason jars
splashed crimson pallets of rustic rural splendor. The music began, he stood nervously
waiting, looking down at his rented black shoes. She grasped her father’s arm. Fervent
desire charged fiery passion. Sugary words melted sultry shadows. Fireflies and fairy
dust lit moonless nights. Silence invited the darkness. Substance replaced by distance;
whiskey preferred to a kiss. Emotions frost bit in autumn’s showy splendor she’d climb
grasping, experiencing struggle with the fortitude of English ivy. She knew he watched
her sleep.
From Guest Contributor Christy Schuld
Jul
Mid-Night Dilemma
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Am I awake? Had I actually slept? I was fighting the urge to check my watch but the curiosity of what unholy hour this was got the better of me.
Slipping my hand out from under the sleeping bag I paused.
No.
Just close your eyes, go back to sleep it’s too early for this.
As I closed my eyes, my thoughts swirled attempting to deduce and desperately seeking an answer I knew would destroy my chances to sleep again this night.
Just sleep.
I can’t.
Inevitably the unbearable urge won and I was cursed with the answer I sought.
From Guest Contributor Michael Major
Jun
Wishes
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
I saw a comet yesterday. It came as though from nowhere, soaring across the deep blue expanse of sky inset with bright stars. Watching it, I felt youthful again, glowing with vibrant dreams and astronomical aspirations—reborn like a phoenix from the ashes of adulthood.
In a moment of euphoria, I closed my eyes and wished for the love of my life. The fiery tail ripped through the night, searching for my soulmate. When I opened my eyes, my wife was standing before me.
Then I remembered—comets are hard, icy rocks, and they suck the life from the sun.
From Guest Contributor Taylor Shepeard
May
Perception
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
The night sky was the underside of a felt baldachino; the tower an ornate column; and the church main an altar for some expected giant: bold and bright against the diffuse starlight.
She wasn’t sure about the floodlights now.
“You going in or what?” Frieda tended towards the curt. “I’m happy either way.”
“Um–”
“Night wedding because he looks better in the dark?”
“Mum!”
“That laneway he knocked you up in must have been pitch.”
“MUM!”
“Twice your bloody age.”
The eighteen-year-old eased out of the limo’s back seat, wondering if the weight she felt was really just the baby.
From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid
Feb
Swan
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Why such sorrow for the swan on the water? Why is it her head is hung with such woe? The moonlight lines her with silver as she glides ripples atop the placid pond. And there are banks of passionflowers that glint their crimsons through the night. Had I been that swan, never would you see my nape so weak and crestfallen, so inwardly curved like tendrils at winter’s start. Because there are other swans on the pond with dispositions just the same. And if I swam my sadness to theirs, perhaps our troubles would combine like violin strings and bows.
From Guest Contributor Man O’Neal
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
Jan
A Viking Burial
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
“Who does this anymore?” Joshua asked. “A viking burial — is it even legal?”
I looked out at the lake, its opposite shoreline no longer visible under the moonless night sky. The family lake house was well secluded, shrouded in forest nearly twenty miles thick.
“It’s what he would have wanted,” I answered, glancing down at the lifeless figure in the wooden canoe, hands gracefully folded, with a wreath of crumpled newspaper haloing his head.
With a heavy sigh, Joshua waded the canoe out to water as I lit several matches. He smirked.
“Feels like cheating, without the bow and arrow.”
From Guest Contributor Amanda S.