It's funny how a name can take you back, revive forgotten memories, put you in touch with a simpler, more secure time. It normally happens unexpectedly as well, puts you off your guard. Take this morning. I'm coming down the stairs ready to head off to the office, the recent rumours of redundancies bouncing around my head. I walk into the kitchen and my wife is sitting at the table, over a cup of coffee, poring over the l...
Time for work, even though I’d rather stay here, sitting in my chalet, in my armchair. I only work down the road in the greenhouses, so there’s no rush, just another few minutes to observe my abode where I have lived for five months. I really do like it, even though it’s nothing more than a bedsit. Below the main windows is a maple sideboard upon which are three vases, no plants in them yet, and a cream coloured dial tele...
It was haunted. It had to be. How else could it be doing what it was doing, stealing her soul bit by bit? Evil. Sadistic. It was incessant and invasive, convincing her that the world outside was not what it seemed. Pitting her against herself, that was its strategy. Whatever it was that lived inside that clock. She wasn’t even sure where it came from. Was it there all along; when she’d moved in? Or, did someone sneak into...
We need to talk! I’ve chosen this moment to say something! I hope you’ll understand what I’m about to say? If we’re to continue living in harmony, it’s time you heard some home truths! Just lately your behaviour and mood swings have become unpredictable. You’re keeping me awake at night! To be honest, I feel I'm walking on egg-shells, waiting for things to turn ugly every time things don’t go your way! Enough is enough! I...
When Bear returned from getting his lunch and marking the boundaries of his territory, Girl was again asleep in the rocking chair. One hand was trailing down the side, her head lolled against a shoulder, and she was drooling slightly. He stopped to look at her, and again shook his head. “Poor kid.” He gently picked her up and carried her into the great room of the cabin. She stirred, smiled, leaned her head against his ch...
I don’t know when I lost her. She held on as long as she could. I was aloof. Careless. I loved her. I just never showed her how much. Now I can’t. She has flown away forever. I saw caterpillars. She saw butterflies.
The Bear yawned and stretched, then walked out into the sunlight. He thought it was about time to patrol his territory, marking it out, and making sure other carnivores weren’t taking liberties. That Mama brown bear seemed particularly to like trying to nudge her boundaries over onto his, but he guessed that was because she had two littlies to worry about now. So, Bear started ambling along, enjoying the day, checking tha...
The events that would end in the major’s death began to unfold long before Christmas Eve. This I know only retrospectively: until the moment the major was shot, none of us could have predicted it. One thing you learn during wartime – more than at any other period, perhaps – is that while you may sense an imminent threat, or shiver with foreboding, it is only afterwards the connections that contributed to an event become c...
“Boy oh boy, it’s a hot one,” my wife exclaimed as she gave the sweating pitcher one last swirl before pouring each of us a glass. Exhausted and relieved, I sipped my iced tea while slowly rocking in the hammock of our screened porch. I savored my reward while my dog and I watched the movers close the back of their truck before driving away. Knuckles then curled up beneath me and fell asleep. This was me honoring our agre...
I was flicking through sites on my phone while enjoying my morning coffee when I read an advertisement for a writing competition. To be eligible you were required to write a story of between one and five thousand words about a situation where you survived or had beaten the odds. I thought I love to write; I could do this! I finished my coffee and went back inside and headed to my home office and started my laptop and open...
Hi, folks.My name is Bruiser. I'm a little dachshund. I weigh in at five pounds soaking wet. I'm two years old. I'm adorable and playful.But enough about me. This story is about my human Mommy and Daddy.I was just sitting there eavesdropping under the coffee table as my humans had a conversation about my human Mommy and her doctor's appointment yesterday. Her doctor wanted her to go see an oncologist. I wondered what that...
You were always there, around a distant corner, the far-away man, in the back of my mind. As my sister lay withering away in a hospital bed, it was you, with those ice-blue eyes, always smiling, that wit, your spark. I could see all of you, still. You were the sunlight and the rain, the thunder and the fire. You were everything rolled into one, and I moved about with those vibrations, that beautiful noise. My feet moved t...
Dear Sam, I watch the June bugs crawl around as the fireflies float and light up my porch. It makes me want to let go, give in and be free. Part of me wants to tell you, you do light up this tiny space, my world. Your humor and compassion, that coolness and great love for music make me feel like I’m back in our hometown, but I’m not. I did escape that world and left for college to start over. I started over in an empt...
Just dusty objects in a box, just traces of love affairs, of friendships long gone and whispers in bedrooms. Just a house standing alone, bearing witness through time. Just our memories in the air, some words echoing softly in the dark tunnels of the mind, smiles of long-gone days, flimsy stories refusing to die.
Eden. The word doesn’t need adornment, it just evokes the image of paradise. Except, it doesn’t in my case. Though not by any means hell, my Eden wasn’t the paradise you should find yourself praying for. For you see, my Eden was, and maybe always will be, my community; a coastal Australian town, about five hundred kilometres, though at times it felt more like five hundred years, away from Sydney. Eden was, as you might ha...
