I lit out at sixteen. By thirty I realized getting out then was what saved me from repeating the dismal life path I’d witnessed with my grandparents, parents, and now siblings. The mixture of Irish blood from my mother’s side and German blood from my father’s side, which combo I shared with only one of…
Category: fiction
#FF — Prowess
PHOTO PROMPT © Alicia Jamtaas Hugh’s lair is fully equipped to impress his lovers, from the twinkle lights to the slate fireplace, from the soft Italian leather to the sequoia slab table. Hugh’s suggested hunting prowess manifests in the mounted moose skull. He meets them at networking conferences in the city, flirts until five, then…
The Unicorn Challenge — Careful
© Doug Jacquier Marcia continued rubbing her right buttock while waiting for the receipt and to make a follow-up appointment with the receptionist at the clinic. Her chart, under a pseudonym, was growing. She was too embarrassed to seek out testing and treatment from Dr. Bane, her and her husband, Charles’, primary care physician. Instead,…
#FF — The Blah of Beige
PHOTO PROMPT © Liz Young Spider felt weary in his marrow. The gravity of depression was unsettling. His hunting clockwork, accustomed to clicking along as it explored angles to exploit, had unwound, stopping here, in the featurelessness of beige. Why had Poppy vanished? Yes, he would have ground her heart to dust in time, but…
The Unicorn Challenge — Trained Unicorn
© Ayr/Gray The promise of spectacle is what draws them. The posters, facebook marketing banners, and online local newspaper ads say it is a trained unicorn. The price per ticket is outrageously expensive, but who can resist? When Youtube provides every form of titillation to be voyeuristically ingested through eyes held captive in the dull…
#FF — Shapes in the Clouds (RIP Sinead O’Connor)
PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast Back then Horatio was a boy who preferred watching shapes shift in the clouds to math equations and book reports. His mother, a chemist, and his father, a civil engineer, left parent-teacher conferences tight-lipped and disappointed. “It’s time you faced the real world, son,” his father said as he left…
The Unicorn Challenge 072123 — Biblical
© Ayr/Gray Barksley refused to believe his unnatural proclivities were his fault. Having been sent away to Saint Percival Boarding School at age nine, he was predated upon in every fashion by everyone who was stronger than he was, and everyone was stronger. Nuns rapped his knuckles with the metal edges of rulers for not…
Tao Talk 