family
The Shark
Yes, mermaids were real. So were mermen, but that fact didn't seem to be as satisfying. Jacob had come to that assumption rather young. That people just did not care about mermen. He’d seen paintings of his sisters, even heard the stories about them, but never any about himself, or his brothers.
By Juliet Napier4 years ago in Fiction
Dia de Los Muertos . Top Story - July 2021.
NOTE: This story is based on true events dramatized to convey my crisis of identity. *** Purple, amber, and white flowers adorned the table like a garden club meeting. I cannot name them but know the colors. The sun faded over the horizon, and the shifting hues radiated its prisms onto the walls of my daughter's living room. I escaped the throng of people inside to find my thoughts in the backyard.
By J. S. Wade4 years ago in Fiction
Morgan's Story
A calmness came to Morgan as she continued to sink down into the dark depths of the Gulf of Mexico. She kept her eyes open, brave and daring. The sun’s light began to fade as her lungs needed no air the further she slowly sank. A sole Blacktip shark crept its way in perfect view. Morgan halted her desent and reached out. In her mind it whispered, Carcharhinus limbatus. Suddenly, beneath Morgan’s feet, from the dark below, a black orb moved and faded into nothing. Had Morgan the ability to stop and measure the almost human sized black orb, she would have taken caution at the giant shark it was attached to. The air in Morgan’s lungs, she needed to breathe. Her eyes darted then shifted up. She was too far down to make it to the water’s surface. She calmly excepted her fate and allowed her body to calmly rest. She took a deep breath in.
By Anthony Diaz4 years ago in Fiction
Mary Gold
In a neighborhood of nice houses, Mary Archer’s home was the “nicest.” The gabled structure had a large lemonade porch, complete with two rocking chairs. The shingles were scalloped and the building was painted a pleasant pale yellow. A paver driveway led to a tastefully hidden garage toward the rear of the property. A brick walkway brought visitors to the white stairs leading to the porch. Pretty azalea bushes fronted the porch and a lovely willow tree shaded the property with gently swaying branches. The single most striking feature of the home, however, were the stunning beds of marigolds that lined the entire walkway. The bright yellow of the blooms beautifully complimented the rest of the house’s features, making the home look like something you would see on the cover of a magazine.
By Antonella Di Minni4 years ago in Fiction
Pressed Flowers
Five years in, Kelsey was still astonished at the dryness of Texas soil come August. You could soak it with a hose twice in a ten-hour span and you’d still wake to find it parched or even cracking the next morning. Still, she and the garden did their dance every new day: drench the soil, prune the flowers, pluck the tomatoes from their sprawling vines. Every few days she had the grim privilege of crushing a parasitic worm between her bare fingers, just to shake things up.
By Steven A Jones4 years ago in Fiction
Danette and Her Love for Picture Books
Danette was having a very bad day. Awful, in fact. Nothing seemed to be going her way. She was so glum that she decided: enough is enough! She needed to get up off her bum. And make something! So she first put on her thinking cap that had magical powers. It transported her back in time to when she was a kid. She saw her younger self gushing over picture books. She thought: I know! I’ll make a picture book! Danette was a natural born storyteller.
By Danette Byatt4 years ago in Fiction
Going Away With The Fairies
I’m standing, kicking at the soil, waiting for my Grandpa to appear. We knocked on the window a couple of minutes ago to let them know we were here and now we’re waiting at the garden fence around the side of the building. We struck lucky today; sometimes they’ll only let us see him through the window.
By Elissa Dawson4 years ago in Fiction
From The Deep Blue
After three long weeks under the hotel we were running out of ideas for a way out. The meals were sparse and the beds were unbearable. You would think for the quality of the resort that we were under that our kidnappers could do better, but no. That is the way that it was and we had no choice but try and get used to it. How we wound up below here was beyond our control and all we had was one another until we either died or escaped. The way we figured that if anyone could find us they would have by now.
By Ruby Estelle 4 years ago in Fiction
Hopeful Glow
This piece is a bit different from the short fiction I had written before. I am going to describe a dream that I had a few nights ago in as much detail as I can remember. Before I do so, I feel some real-world context is required. I normally do not talk about my personal life, but I feel it necessary in this case to establish what brought up this dream. See, I have been fighting mental exhaustion for the past month. My significant other Ally (whom I have mentioned multiple times in the past) had to leave her job, partly due to mental burnout and partly to care for her ailing mother. (No, it is not COVID.) With that lost income, I have been scrambling to keep the house's finances in control. Fortunately, we are breaking even but only just. I have been trying to find new sources of income since then, but my desperation had increased as the reserve savings decreased. Ally kept trying to tell me that things will work themselves out, but my conscious mind did not want to process that. I guess my unconscious mind had to take over one night...
By Adam Wallace4 years ago in Fiction
