Love
The Envious Flood. V+ Fiction Award Winner.
I spent most of the drive thinking about the whale. Highway 1 North isn’t as busy as I remember. I have my window down just a crack—enough for a breeze, however chilly. The thermometer on the dash reads 54. I assume that’s Fahrenheit. It strikes me as a bit cold for California, even the central coast. Maybe I’m just remembering things being warmer than they actually were. The rain’s been light but constant. Fog hovers over the mountains and drifts in thin meshes across the highway. That much I remember, at least.
By Steve Hanson4 years ago in Fiction
Curated
I found it after you left, sitting innocently amongst the clutter on my desk. We spent that morning in a strained silence that splintered from the night before. If we are to be honest, the tension had been building for months now. You are just too… regimented. I have begged you for patience again and again. I always seem to fall short then you feel bad for yelling. We know this dance; the steps are so familiar. I fall short, you get angry, I make it up to you, you apologize. I suppose that is the problem, I never apologize to you and now you have disappeared. You and everything you own, save for this small box wrapped in unassuming brown paper.
By C Waterman4 years ago in Fiction
The Brown Paper Box
It was a rainy day outside and I spent hours at my father’s house helping him pack the last of my childhood home. It was finally my weekend off from working in a rehabilitation facility. I was tired but I loved my father and needed to help him move into a smaller senior home. He made the decision of moving realizing it was hard to keep clean and maintain by himself. I tried to help as much as I could but my hours at work increased after my divorce just to afford my house alone. I just finished eating the pizza my father ordered for my ten-year-old son and I, who came along with me because it was my weekend with him. My son ate his food quietly before retreating to his Nintendo switch. He has not taken my divorce well and that made my heart ache. However in the end it was a better choice even for him, I remind myself just like my parent’s did when they divorced seven years ago.
By Larae Sanchez4 years ago in Fiction
It's not always Amazon friendly
It was a regular Tuesday night and I could not find what I was looking for online. I love putting things in my shopping cart and at the end of the day never really buy evertything, or I "save" it for later. That night I felt asleep without ordering anything or so I thought. The next day I was working from home and I heard the doorbell ring, as I checked the cameras I saw that something was delivered. I thought that my husband had ordered something. When I went to go get the box it was addressed to me. Usually I go check the tracker on Amazon, but I checked and nothing was ordered or expected. So I did not know if I should open it. But, hello, the curiousity got the best of me.
By Jocelyn Sida4 years ago in Fiction
The Café
Him. It was him. He couldn't stay out of my head. I wanted him...no, I needed him. I knew he felt the same by the way he was looking at me. It has been two weeks since I has last seen him and I thought he was gone for good due to our last conversation. It has been the longest two weeks of my life. I know it is cliché of me to say that but it is exactly what it felt like. The bell rang making me flinch and looking away.
By Mia Alejos 4 years ago in Fiction
The Real Illness
He lay inside the pink mosquito net on a rickety bed near the window, pale and thin. He would turn over to the window to welcome the new day. He would do it slowly, afraid that the legs of the bed might give in. He would do it every morning when the sun comes out on the horizon. At night before sleeping, he would face away from the window. It had a benefit to him because when he coughed and needed to spit phlegm, he would just reach the tin can under his bed. It was better than to spit through the window and somebody would spot him. But the coughing did not hide the illness.
By M.G. Maderazo4 years ago in Fiction
Good Things Come...
It was the kind of day artists and poets lived for. Bleak, gray and slightly chilly. The leaves had all abandoned their posts on the tree limbs and now littered the cobblestone streets below, kicking up with every little gust of wind and dancing to a new spot on the path. The clouds hid the warm rays of the sun and cast the village in shadow as its inhabitants, bundled up against the sudden cold, moved lethargically through their work.
By Breanna Pierce4 years ago in Fiction
The Shark
The bump jars me awake. I pry open my salt-crusted eyes and see a blurry blue-colored sky framed in the open orange door of the life raft. Wind pours in through the opening and stirs the stale air inside the raft. The air flow feels good against my sunburned skin and helps revitalize my body. My mouth is dry but I manage to conjure up enough moisture to lick my cracked lips. The relief is short-lived.
By Steve E Donaldson4 years ago in Fiction
The Estranged Wife Part 3
Sarah Collins’ POV “Good morning.” George greeted with a hoarse voice. He wasn’t feeling well the entire afternoon and worked until 10 o’clock last night to finish some reports. He came home with a fever and was coughing all night. I knew he didn’t get enough sleep because of that.
By Jem Ricafort4 years ago in Fiction
Searching for Sharks
Even with nothing but a thin wetsuit, the warm waters of the Caribbean felt almost like bathwater on Jordan’s skin. Diving on the west coast, where Jordan had lived his entire life, was always fun in its own way. But there was something special about the beauty of the waters here off of the east coast of Honduras. Of course, perhaps it was just the natural high of being somewhere new-vacations like this were rare with a PhD workload and teaching assistant salary. Jordan slowly let air some air into his BCD (the inflatable jacket divers wear around that holds their tank and controls their buoyancy) and came to a hover fifty meters beneath the surface. He looked over to his right, where Meghan was almost slowing her descent. She looked at him and gave him the OK sign, the universal underwater symbol for being all good, and added an excited smile for good measure.
By Thomas Kennedy4 years ago in Fiction
