Leann was in the process of getting ready for her first real night out with her friends since the birth of her daughter. Now her friends had not abandoned her during her pregnancy and after she gave birth. They all had dropped by often but they never lingered as there was no smoking allowed in the house. She had stopped smoking and even begged her live-in boyfriend James to quit, but since he wasn't ready to he was forced...

Paris … ah Paris … he had been in love with the city since that magical day in April fifty five years before when he had stepped off the train at the Gare du Nord and walked out of the station into the bustle of the busy streets of the capital. He was a country born and had lived all his life on his father’s farm and his mother had decided that now he was fifteen it was time he saw something of the wider world. He was a q...

The prospect of decorating never appealed to Derek. It was always a case of putting it off until later, but later never came. He would make excuses that he would often believe himself, such was the conviction he told them with. Yet, today, he had actually made a start, dampening the wallpaper to make it easier to strip. His wife was no help whatsoever. It was her constant pestering that forced him to make a start if only...

Over twenty years ago I found a spell-book of a white witch. I looked through the spells listed and there were many interesting spells in the text. There were spells to win affection and to keep people from harming themselves and many others. (Every time I tried to cast the augur to receive love, I got interference from a specific individual that ruined the casting. You might think she was interfering because she was the...

Winners, they say, are born. It is not just a question of the right combination of genes that combine to create the particular physical or mental abilities, but a special quality of self-belief bordering on arrogance at times, and the willingness to take risks when prudence would suggest caution. The other side of the coin is that losers too appear to be born that way, even if they are equally gifted by nature.This is a s...

THE GIRL IN THE RED DRESSI saw her face, a crowded place.I have reached the point in my life where I have to start my journey. Time to stop ‘trying to’ live life and live it for once. With my vision blurred and a problematic iris, I found myself in the middle of my mid-life crisis and realised I had been living life the wrong way. I was on a wrong journey, one that was asymmetric with destiny. So, I broke out of my shell....

The damp discolored leaves pile themselves onto the earth below their previous home. Unable to handle the torture bestowed upon them. The cold kills the weak. The last of the rain throws itself onto the pavement, building in size. It plans to overwhelm the planet, foiled by the various drains placed throughout the street. The devastating battle is masked by the ignorance of the human mentality. The people who walk past se...

  The official plan, as carefully explained to all parental units, had called for Amy and Libby to share a motel room. The guys would stay with Mark’s roommate who was supposed to be in summer school. In reality, Mark’s roommate had just flunked out. And no one questioned that Bob and Libby would have the motel room to themselves.Once they were dropped off, Mark and Amy headed for the shelter of Howard Ingram’s new place....

  Alexandria, a small, nondescript city on the Red River in central Louisiana, is the symbolic checkpoint separating the state’s French, Catholic south from its Scots-Irish, Protestant north. In the pre-interstate days, a two-lane highway weaved its way south from town toward Baton Rouge. A picturesque, tree-lined bayou flanked one side of the road. On the other side were pastures and a string of whitewashed cabins which...

 The phone wouldn't stop ringing. Amy, sitting at the table on the other side of the kitchen, eating a bologna-on-white-with-mayonnaise sandwich and heading into what she sensed would be one of the   steamier parts of,"The Carpetbaggers," tried to ignore the noise, though she couldn’t help wondering what had happened to her sister who always tried to beat everyone else to the phone. Jan was sure to get it before long, she...

PART ONETHE CULTURE OF ME Once upon a time, there was me living on the planet Earth. And the next story has begun, when my planet was strong enough to start on the program for the near space exploration. In the one hundred anniversary of the Saint Seraphim Sarovsky, I was riding a bus in the Russian city of Chicago. And Russian woman was sitting near, frightened by the loud parental advisory containing talk of two young m...

Delmar Bullock wasn’t impressed, not one little bit. The three young farts standing just inside the door to his storage shed didn’t seem good for much, most of all a Klan job.At first, they tried to act cocky like this was no big deal. But none of  ‘em said a word after seeing the cross he put together that afternoon. He wondered why Jack Boudreaux, who always worried about security leaks, picked these three boys to do a...

 Dancing to Ray Charles: Ch 07, S8ummer Inactivities “I guess it’s about time we had that little talk.” Jake Cahill stood in the doorway to the crowded laundry room, watching his son pull clothes from the dryer.“Oh, I already know all about that stuff,” said Mark. “The stork brings the babies and leaves them under a cabbage leaf.”“So that’s how it’s done. And all this time I thought Doc Miles brought them in his little bl...

  All the ‘grown-ups’ were gone, but no one was interested in re-starting the card game. At Amy’s suggestion, the guys fixed something to drink while she grabbed some snacks. Provisions in hand, they went out into the warm night air on the screened-in back porch. To keep from attracting bugs, they left the lights off. Except for the glow from inside the house, it was dark.To no one’s surprise, Mark got the conversation ro...

 The arrival of Amy’s mother, complete with an old photo album halted both their card game and the Interrogation of Willie. The invitation they had expected and feared, to join her on the couch, soon followed. When the migration ended, Willie and Amy were sitting on either side of her mother while Mark and Bob knelt and peered over them from behind the couch. The first picture Mrs. Marshall pointed out showed two babies,...