Posts Tagged ‘Old Man’
Jan
Under Watch
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Armed agents conceal themselves in doorways and behind lampposts and newspapers. You just passed by one and didn’t even know you had. Time to electrocute your thinking. They’re paid to spy, and they spy on people like me – an old man walking a dog on a rope – who’ve done nothing wrong. I can’t sleep through the night for worry that they’re building a dossier against me by twisting something I said. Is it becoming a grass armchair? A black wall? A crying mirror? If it is, I’m finished. One day I’ll squeeze into a crowded elevator that’ll disappear between floors.
From Guest Contributor Howie Good
Howie’s latest collections are I’m Not a Robot from Tolsun Books and A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submissions Press.
Dec
Dangerous
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
A young couple ambled into a strip mall parking lot. Carla wrapped herself around Thomas.
“I’m making a point,” she said.
“Cool.”
“I want to show someone I’m in love.” He smiled. “An old man.”
He frowned, and Carla nodded toward a lone figure staring from across the street. She kissed Thomas hard, quick. “He found me on the dating site. We had coffee. I was, like, your picture was 30 years old! Think your Cary Grant charm would win me over?”
“Cary …?”
“George Clooney?”
Thomas pouted.
“But it’s you I love. Now go put a scare into him.”
From Guest Contributor Chris Callard
Sep
The Grave
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
When the old man stopped and wiped his brow, the echo of his shovel continued for a beat. The grave wasn’t deep enough yet, but it was getting light. Every year for the past ten years, he was at the same beach, digging a grave. The digging took longer each year, but he never missed the day. Every year he buried a part of her. It became easier each year; piece by piece, he was healing. The ocean took the love of his life and each year he buried a piece of her favorite jewelry he knows she would want.
From Guest Contributor NT Franklin
Apr
The Way The World Ends
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
At first I thought it was a barrel of whiskey strapped to the back of the gangly old man, stooping him over to half in the parking lot. Snow swirled in orange light clouds. As he shuffled closer, I realized it was an egg, yellowish, enormous, bound with dirty ropes. There were scratches on it as long as my arm, and I wondered whether they came from the inside or the outside. I loaded the groceries into the car and pushed my cart at him.
“That’s not how it works,” he muttered, head down. “I have to carry it myself.”
From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat
Mar
The Untimely Demise Of A Teenage Rebellion
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Heather relaxed into the sofa. The best word to describe her sessions with Dr. Goldstein was therapeutic. She especially took pleasure in the way her stories shocked the old man.
Today, she was relating a particularly scandalous dream, one involving a milkman and a silk robe.
“I must interrupt, Heather. Isn’t a milkman rather anachronistic for a teenager’s dream?”
Heather tried piecing together an explanation that involved vintage reruns, but it eventually unraveled. Still, the umbrage her therapist took when he learned Heather had been sharing entries from her mother’s diary all along made up for her deception’s untimely demise.
Jan
Disturbed
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
There was an old man who never slept at night. I saw him often from my room, I recognized him but didn’t know him.
I used to see a flickering light in his room, it disturbed me and didn’t let me sleep. I wanted to shout ‘could you turn off the light’ but never did.
My sister got married and I shifted to her room. I never saw him again; now all I get to see is a closed window with broken glass. I wonder where he’s gone? Previously, the open window disturbed me and now it’s the closed one.
From Guest Contributor Preeti Singh
Preeti is a french language interpreter and a media professional who is engaged in writing short films and playing characters for tv series.
Jul
A Day, A Span
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
At dawn I am brought forth into this world, howling, crying. Mama, a girl hardly thirteen, swaddling my small frail body in a torn shawl. Oblivious that I am a load, or so I think.
At noon I walk briskly through dusty thorny paths nobody else walks through. A long march that brings only thirst. Fighting a war with no combatants. I am an assassin. I aim, I miss. I aim again, I hit.
By dusk I am an old man walking out of this world, soon. Mama, so long a spirit by now. Papa, a boy hardly an adult.
From Guest Contributor Troy Onyango
Apr
Hospital Song
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
They need to run more tests but Dad pleads, “I want to go home.” This man who built houses can’t stand by himself to pee.
I sit two hours with him daily, passing my sisters or brother in the hall on either end of the visit. We touch hands, squeeze.
A curled little old man under layers of cabinet-warmed blankets, he’s shaking, all ice-blue eyes and Viking-white beard under sunken cheeks.
Television is election chaos. No help there. I realize what’s on my iPad, close his door, crank its volume: Dad and Bob Dylan, gravel-throated friends, a hospital bed duet.
From Guest Contributor Tjorven
Oct
The Mad King
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
You timidly stepped inside the royal chambers, unnerved by the rumors of random beheadings and incoherent proclamations. Many people went for a sovereign audience and were never heard from again.
An old man sat the throne. He looked regal, not crazed, dressed in the golden robes and diamond crown of his august office. He stared sternly as, wobbling, you inched forward. In his lap sat a cat, which he stroked gently.
The man opened his mouth to speak and you dropped to one knee.
“The King has an announcement to make.”
Everyone froze as the King opened its mouth.
“Meow.”
Mar
Hotspot
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
The lone imagineer of the radioactive sand cloud that froze Florida in death and time worked for Disney. Tourists, natives, gangsters, and gators were rendered untouchable beneath a toxic sheet of glass. The reflection burned up satellites and crisped drones mid-air, and it was agreed the whole place should be forgotten, for now. So they forgot the flamingos and the dancing girls and the cigar factories in Tampa where the son cubano played on. Nobody remembered to forget the island past Key West where an old man sold boat rides to Havana for five dollars and a bottle of rum.
From Guest Contributor Courtney Watson