Hell, we were friends. We had always been friends. My back door looked across the alley to her backdoor. My family moved in when I was four. I would stand with my hands clutched to the chain link fence and watch her. Shortly after we moved in, my mother and her mother became friends. They decided that we should play together. My mother tells me that at first I was a little shy, afraid of her. Apparently, Jennifer accepted...

While sweeping the hallway or emptying the trash cans, or making sure the bathrooms had paper towels and toilet paper, Orrin thought about Jessica. “So what if I’m the janitor and she’s a lawyer’s assistant, I’m just as good as anyone who works at Ainsworth and Thelin.”Orin was extremely shy but determined to ask her out and believed that if she got to know him, she would see that he was a lot more than a janitor. He wish...

“Dad, come on,” she began as she held out a plate of food to her father. “You have to try and eat something.” He looked up at her with his tired, over-worked blue-gray eyes. “Charlotte, I can’t. I have to focus on my research. This is very important.” She stared back at him, unresponsive, and he sighed. “You wouldn’t understand.” “What wouldn’t I understand, dad?” She questioned him, growing resentful at his stubbornness....

Lissa Morgan walked along the busy street in New York city, talking on her cell as she kept an eye on the overcast sky. It was just mid September, but the rain had been threatening the residents for a week now and had not fully released itself. Her honey coloured hair had soaked up the moisture in the air and was loose and curly around her shoulders as she tried to toss is unsuccessfully over her shoulder. She laughed at...

The accident wasn’t her fault. It was both of theirs. “… I can’t help falling in love with you”, sung Elvis Presley’s husky voice from the radio. It was the 3 rd of January 1962 and the summer heat was out in full force. It was what you would expect to see Cottesloe Beach on a sweltering summers day, people having fun, families and children and the odd group of teenyboppers. “Throw us the towels Payton” Adrianna said to t...

LEARNING TO LOVE I’ve been alone all my life. Mum and dad were killed in a car accident when I was only three years old. I can’t even remember them. All I have is a pewter frame, a family heirloom, with their photograph. With no living relatives, I was sent to an orphanage. There was no love in that cold place. Sure there was food and clothing, a roof over my head, but that was all. None of the nurturing, caring, soft tou...

Later, on the way to Shirley’s, I noticed a box of books on the back seat of Jenny’s car. “What are all those books for in the back?”“Oh, that’s my summer reading,” she said. “Before I left for here, I borrowed a bunch of books from some friends. That’s what we do--trade books,” she added. “I love to read.”“I used to love to read when I was younger, but now I hardly read anything except journals and research papers.”“Too...

Rainbow’s End: Pt.1Note: This is a long two part story but an intriguing journey that may be worth taking.I was on my way to a bio-technology conference in Philadelphia but didn’t have to be there until three that afternoon, so I decided to get off the turnpike for awhile and see some of the countryside. I had just reached the top of a hill when I heard a horrible clanking sound from my engine and the car lost speed. No o...

The shrill sound of the tea pot screaming shattered Max’s reverie. He was remembering when he and Rosie met forty years ago. He looked down at the cup, breathing a deep sigh, remembering the vision of the two of them rowing down the Charles River that May morning, the night after their first date, the first of many before they married, both of them still in their senior years of college, he at Harvard, she at Radcliffe, a...

Jennifer sat up in bed and greeted the morning with a smile. She glanced at the calendar, filled with pink X’s, on the wall next to the bed. She felt a special glow inside that made her tingle from head to toe, and today nothing would extinguish it. She then enthusiastically said, “I don’t believe it, my wedding day is finally here! “ Wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, she hummed the tune, “Here comes the bride.” S...

Gordon Fink looked in the bathroom mirror, muttering to himself, shaking his head, "You look like an old man,” he said, leaning over the sink, staring into his eyes, and took off his glasses then moved his face closer to the mirror, noticing the wrinkles on his forehead, his thinning white hair. "I'm losing so much hair," he said, remembering the thick brown hair he once had. "You're an old man,” he mumbled, noticing his...

New Year, New Beginnings She woke up the first day of the new year with a new outlook. She already had an appointment to get her hair done, her nails done and half her closet bagged up for Goodwill. When Christmas came and she spent it with her family, she dodged the usual questions, “Are you seeing anyone?” “Do you have a boyfriend?”. It brought home the fact that she was all alone. But how did she tell her family that g...

After a long time when the colonel said nothing Hans asked, “And what is the bad news?” The colonel smiled slightly with an expression of complex appreciation. “Private Rickmers, you are a credit to the German Army. You know how to smile at death.” The colonel continued, “All letters to German soldiers are read. Your girl friend should not have signed her name as ‘Ruth Cohen’. “I lied about my age so I could serve in the...

‘We approach each other, I gaze in your face, I find your lips tender, as we kiss in a daze. Again and again we kiss, with each more yearning then before, Then, I awaken, I am alone, yet not so alone as before.’ “There is Cayo Lobos, just up ahead.” Brian’s voice squawked in my headset. I closed my tablet where I had been writing and looked ahead. I could see the small island with sandy beaches lined with majestic palms,...

Patches of snow flecked the dirt road in rural France as a squad of German soldiers rode by on motorcycles. A land mine exploded, destroying the first motorcycle, and killing the rider. The other motorcycles crashed. Their riders tried to shoot at unseen enemies. French resistance fighters quickly mowed them down with submachine gun fire. The resistance fighters fled to avoid the approach of more Germans. All was silent....