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Short stories: A little suspense UN/HOOKED LOVE STORY
Audrey, with eight-week old on chest, diaper bag on shoulder, pushes through the door to the coffee shop as soon as they unlock it (late today at 5:06 AM), pre-empting crowds and small talk at the counter. Black coffee in spare hand, she collapses into the crumb-infested couch near the toy box filled with rough-looking dolls and cookie-stained books. Here she WILL swig this mugful before the other La Leche moms show up. Last night her husband muttered another woman’s name in his sleep. His ‘was only a dream’ speech when she woke him plain exhausted her.On Mom’s tail are the recovering alcoholics. As they pause in the wind-swept doorway to scope the scene, she shivers, spreading her hands on Baby’s back.Meanwhile, at home in his basement, glowing pictures on Mark’s screen jack up his heart rate as does the onset of a rustling upstairs: Fiona? Up so early? Will she come down?Bianca the barista scrapes her front teeth on the backside of her tongue-ring as she eyes the group that’s jus
Short stories: A little suspense THE ELDER GENTLEMAN
He approached the young man, who was aimlessly taking photos of the artist’s exhibit with his phone. “Hello, there,” he said.Startled, because of the elder gentleman’s powerful voice reverberating throughout the room, not because he was a scaredy-cat or nothin’, the young man turned. “Oh,” he said. “Hello, sir.”The elder gentleman wasted no time, turning their attention to a painting occupied with various blues and black, but no real form. “Now what do you get out of this?” His hands held an imaginary brush, spreading paint every which way.The young man laughed. “Lemme see what it’s called,” he said. The young man contorted his back and strained his framed eyes to read the minuscule lettering. “It’s called ‘Night.’ I suppose it’s … a window?”“Yes,” said the older gentleman, “but you had to read the title. Now look at this one.” The elder gentleman guided them to another piece, this one bright, depicting a woman with a wildly dispersed color set conveying a headdress. “I can sense
Short stories: A little suspense TIE-DYE
Peter and Sonja slouched in the audio-visual room of the vasectomy clinic, giggling like sixth graders. Sonja wished there was a sink with paper towels, so she could make spitballs. The movie featured a barbecuing man in a red-checkered apron who had had a vasectomy on Friday and was well enough to grill a T-Bone that very night.“This is incredibly stupid,” Sonja’s lips tickled Peter’s ear. He swatted at it as though a mosquito had been nibbling on it.“What?”“Are you actually taking this seriously?” she yelled above the volume. “Don’t you get how ludicrous this is?”Decades later, whenever Sonja saw a man barbecuing—at a church picnic or at a county fair—the grainy footage came flooding back, along with the jowly face of the man in the red-checkered apron, jousting with the sinewy steak.Sonja’s biological clock had starteding going haywire around her thirty-sixth birthday. It seemed to change its mind every week. Some days she fantasized that she was pulling out its springs with h
Short stories: A little suspense THE LAST ORIGINAL THOUGHT
“Oh my god, Dave! Did you hear that, the television? Dave, you have to get a load of this!”Dave had not heard the television, or Jennifer, for that matter. He was in the couple’s study, head wrapped in enormous noise-canceling headphones, eyes dancing across the lines of text displayed on his laptop monitor. A nightly habit of late, he was writing at the large oak desk he had inherited from his father.He was absorbed in reworking a particularly dense section of dialogue when Jennifer burst into the study, backlit by the television in the adjoining room, a silhouetted specter portending the death of his productivity. With arms spread wide in mock dramatic fashion, she descended upon her bemused husband.“Come on, you know I’m working — ” he started.“On your novel, allegedly. You’ve never even let me look at it, so for all I know you’re watching porn in here. What’s your poison? Guy-girl? Girl-girl? Girl-girl-girl-girl-” she was counting them off on her fingers, “girl-girl … guy?”“Y
Short stories: A little suspense LIFE DRAWING
Determined not to look, Samantha strode past the tall mirrors that covered an entire sidewall in the studio. Her third-year college drawing class would arrive in a half hour and she hustled to set up the easels, arrange the model stand lighting, and select a cassette to play on her ancient boom box.But the mirrors drew her in and Sam stopped to stare. Jeez, I look like a scarecrow…I should be planted in some farmer’s cornfield…and my hair looks like gray straw.The door at the back of the studio rattled open and that night’s model sauntered in: pale, well-padded, wide hips, big breasts, with red hair worn in a French braid.“You’re early, Lucy. What’s the rush?”“Ah, ya know…boyfriend problems. His jock buddies keep razzing him about me posing nude. I told him it’s my body and ta fuck off.”“That doesn’t sound good. He should come by sometime. I’ll pay good money for a male model who can hold still for forty minutes.”Lucy grinned. “Yeah, that would teach ’im. Whatcha got planned for
Short stories: A little suspense ELAINE'S IDYLL
I put on my makeup in a cracked mirror, and purse my lips: a web of rose-red lipstick against fair skin. Skinny jeans, cold shoulders, a pearl clip, and – a soupçon of Chanel No. 5. The last breath in Nana’s old bottle.I set the perfume bottle down – amidst the salves and rolling change and the unfinished scarf I’ve been working on for what seems like forever – and flit fitfully about the room, looking for my ballet pumps. There! – I took them off when I remembered it had been three days since I’d watered my lilies, and their lugubrious scent was dissipating.I’m sick of shadows.Tonight, I’m going.They’ll all be there. The old gang. Two by two. Andy and Jen, who will be holding court as always – Kit and Joseph and Hector, Morgan bringing along whichever one she’s recently bewitched – Benny and Rob, ambiguously – And he! Finally – finally – on Facebook, with a new photo – and still as bold and handsome and marvelous as a knight springing from the pages of a pop-up storybook.Just li
Short stories: A little suspense TOPPING
The children were gone. Lila, the youngest, had just moved out three months before. Marilyn reached up for the branch of the cherry tree, and the stepladder beneath her fell backwards as she did. Flattening out as it hit the lawn. Marilyn cursed and pulled herself up with one hand. In the other she held a small saw; she needed to prune, top off the branches of the tree, and the tree was too high now to do it from the lawn.She sneezed twice, and cursed again. She had never had allergies until the year she turned forty, and now they hit her every single spring and every fall. It was late April, everything turning bright green, and the tree was covered in blossoms. There once had been several cherry trees in the yard. Jay had practically planted an orchard lining their side road when their daughter Allie was a toddler. He had told Allie it was the Cherry Lane from the song Puff the Magic Dragon, and he used to sing the song to her nightly while rocking her, over and over, and it used to
Short stories: A little suspense TALK OF THE TOWN
There’s a town on Florida’s west coast that you’ve never heard of. The people that grow up there never escape. The ones that arrive there, do so to die. You might mistake it for a nursing home gone wrong, heaven’s waiting room if you will.So it shouldn’t be a surprise that after Jason managed to escape this place four years ago, he hadn’t returned. When he meets someone new in Chicago and they ask the obligatory “where're you from,” he gives them the name of the closest city. If it wasn’t for the death of his grandmother, he never would have come back.Admittedly his life in the city wasn’t perfect. His job as a secretary to an unscrupulous attorney was unfulfilling at best. He had hoped it would be a temporary job to pay the bills until an improv troupe discovered him; but he hadn’t been on stage in over a year, his confidence was shaken. Still on those nights when he laid in bed, fretting over a failed audition, one fact managed to soothe his bruised ego, “At least I’m not back hom
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- Short stories: A little suspense WITHDRAWALS
- Short stories: A little suspense THE LOGISTICS
- Short stories: A little suspense LEILANI
- Short stories: A little suspense TALK OF THE TOWN
- Short stories: A little suspense TOPPING
- Short stories: A little suspense ELAINE'S IDYLL
- Short stories: A little suspense LIFE DRAWING
- Short stories: A little suspense THE LAST ORIGINAL THOUGHT
- Short stories: A little suspense TIE-DYE