literature
Families and literature go hand in hand; fictional families to entertain, reflect and inspire.
Hired Hearts
She was simultaneously my best friend and biggest annoyance. I could share every secret, every dark thought or bright light that went through my head, but only with her. We supported each other in our deepest despairs. And we poked and prodded at every sore spot along the way. It’s what twins do.
By Chloe Holzman6 years ago in Families
Plum Jam
While organizing all of the files on my computer of my old writing assignments from college, current projects, and screengrabs of favorite pieces from places like "Brevity" and "SmokeLong Quarterly," I found a short piece I wrote during my second quarter at WWU in Bellingham, Washington in 2019.
By Sierra O’Brien6 years ago in Families
The Chest
I slept with a small wooden chest, with corroded steel ends, under my bed. This had belonged to my paternal grandfather who died while I was very young. I had been told that he gave me this chest to keep my most precious possessions; just as he had done all his life.
By Damián Furfuro6 years ago in Families
Nursery: A Short Story
Jonathan Sommer was born in a nursery, a home birth. It was all the sommer family could afford. He had ten sisters and twenty brothers, all of whom were born just like Jonathan, in the nursery. The day Jonathan turned two years old, his mother and father knew he was different. Each of the boy’s siblings had their own delicate airs about them, like they could float away like angels instead of children. All born with smooth, translucent skin showing off the healthy veins in their faces. But Jonathan was not as delicate and lovely as his Siblings, he could not swing from the mobiles in the nursery like his sisters and he could not see the beautiful lively veins in his skin like all the other boys could. Jonathan's complexion was peachy and soft, a genetic anomaly in the Sommers family. Too, the little boy was much fatter than his siblings. Only two years old but still much too heavy to sit in a hanging basket like his siblings. Jonathan cried when he found out he was not allowed to play with his brothers and sisters anymore, he was simply too rough with them. The boy’s incredible strength would tear the other children’s skin and stain the boys skin with greens, reds, purples and yellows. Eventually Jonathan was moved to his own bed to avoid crushing the other children under his weight. Everyone else shared large soft beds and perfectly laid side by side leaving their neighbor unharmed. But Jonathan had to sleep on the big sacks of soil his parents could provide for him. Even at four years old, Jonathan was bigger and stronger than any of his siblings. The Sommer family fell behind the boy, unable to keep up with his massive appetite. “The boy’s eating us out of house and home!” His father said, Jonathan's mother could only weep, exhausted of options and without any idea of what to do with poor Johnathan. Through tearful sobs Jonathan's mother proposed to her husband the only thing left to do, the boy had to go but to where? His mother pondered what kind of respectable person would take such a burden onto them, none came to mind. It was then that Jonathan's father took his frail wife to the tool shed. “A Hammer to break the skull” he said to her, “a saw to sever fatty limbs” His words bringing about more tears from mothers' eyes. “And thirty hungry children '' this caused his wife’s head to shoot up and stare curiously into his eyes. “It isn’t right! No there must be some other way!” Her eyes are holding more anger than sadness. “There is nothing else we can do! It be us or him! In due time the boy will eat our thirty children and then us!” His father was shouting now. Frustration boiling in his blood, he grabbed his best hand saw off the rack and shoved it into his wife’s shaking hands. Before ushering her out, he chose his heaviest hammer for himself and the two set off to their beloved nursery. Mother’s tip toes felt like stomping feet as she inched her way closer to the sleeping children. Father held no hesitation in stepping hastily up to the soil sack bed his son lay on, on a silent count of three, Jonathan's father swung his deathly hammer down upon the sleeping boy. Jonathan’s mother screamed a wild banshee scream but was unable to turn away. The other children did not wake, too immersed in sweet dream land to rouse to the guttural scream of their mother or the wet blunt sounds of their father’s best hammer colliding with their brothers head. Mother stifled her sobs on the sleeve of her warm nightgown and slowly stepped toward her youngest son, knowing it was her duty now to sever each of the boy’s limbs. Limb by limb she crunched through bone and squelched through bloody muscle. First she squeezed the blood from the left arm onto Jonathan's sisters, then using her long fingernails, scraped tissues from the right arm onto his sleeping brothers. Then finally buried both legs in a bed of new soil to bring new life to the nursery. The deed was done, the boy gone and out of sight. The next day was peaceful, quiet, as mother and father ate their minuscule breakfast of eggs and toast. Johnathans siblings awoke and stretched taller than ever before. Though it was no mystery to their parents, “must be the boys doing” mother mused “I always knew he’d be good for something” she bit into her boiled egg but felt a rotten familiarity in the squelch it made. “Indeed my dear, a worthy sacrifice to see our children so happy and healthy, not to mention the quiet is quite nice, don't you think?” Father added. “Yes, indeed” mother spoke but her mouth held the flesh of the egg in her mouth, eventually spitting the remnants of it into her napkin, a glob of white and yellow though all mother saw was red pulsing muscle. Excusing herself from the table, mother made her way to the nursery for some fresh air and happy smiles from her children. They had all gotten so big just overnight! At first mother was pleased but remembering the deed they had done to achieve such a prize left her feeling sick. She sat on the bench next to her eldest daughter and shut her eyes, hoping to catch a glimpse of clarity rather than foggy guilt. It was only then that her children seemed to speak.
By Paige Osaroth6 years ago in Families
Churchill Garden: A Short Story
My mother was just like me, a beautiful girl who loved nothing more than to play out in her garden. She planted roses just for me, they were her favourite and when she realized I was to be born, she littered the large flower beds with roses of all colours. Red, yellow, white, just everywhere. I spent my childhood watching buds burst into bloom, and letting the overgrown ivy hang down from our canopy to tickle my nose. Mother would sometimes cut the biggest brightest roses from their stems and arrange them around my crib. I was her little rose, so it is only fit that I would be surrounded with creatures like me. She told me everyday that I was her beautiful little rose.
By Paige Osaroth6 years ago in Families
Gnome Comforts - A funny short story for lockdown life
About this Story When I was in primary school, my class used to receive homework that involved practising the words for our weekly spelling test by putting them into sentences. However, this was quite a dry task and my dad was getting sick of helping me do this. So, we decided to start making these sentences into stories that made sense as a whole, much to the delight of my teachers. But this was only impressive for so long and so the stories had to get more and more ambitious. This culminated in the story written below — which, as you may notice, contains a lot of spelling test words with silent ‘H’s and ‘G’s. However, I have improved as a writer since then, being as I am, a 22 year old English graduate as opposed to a 10 year old child. Thus, I have made a few tweaks here and there to make this an even better story.
By Marco Cardoni6 years ago in Families
The Bayou and the Clutter, pt. III/IV
Chapter 3: Grow up. Ten thousand police officers swarmed over the house, at least that is what it seemed like. Iliana knew what had happened before she even got out of the car. Her father was the proud owner of many guns, and with how unpredictable his temper was, the details of what happened were unclear, but Iliana could see in her mind his body, as if looking at a scarecrow in dense fog. She approached one of the officers, and the air was buzzing with the beating of twenty thousand little wings.
By Charlie Sourire6 years ago in Families
The Bayou and the Clutter, Part II
Chapter II: Home, as it was. She didn’t immediately recognize where she was when she woke up. The place seemed unfamiliar, strange. With sleep still in her eyes, Iliana sat up in her childhood room with the bright yellow walls and the keyboard by the door. She loved that keyboard. It had 88 keys and hundreds of instruments programmed into it, but Iliana usually kept it on the grand piano setting. Playing music had gotten her though the roughest of times. This morning, she had an almost unbearable urge to play.
By Charlie Sourire6 years ago in Families
Satori in the Slipstream
Hurry Up and Wait: As the plane lifts off the tarmac, you regret that you won't have a chance to see that conical shaped volcano one last time: so iconic to Japan. “Maybe it's best this way,” you think, but it doesn't still the eruptions in your heart. The plane flies west towards Incheon Airport and the last you see of the archipelago is a black sliver of seismic-shaped coastline jutting out into the rough gray Sea of Japan.
By Steve B Howard6 years ago in Families
