short story

Yes, Today

It was my day to drive. Nature provided a misty rain for our 50-mile commute. I didn’t focus on Neilsen until I had backed the car to the bottom of his driveway.

I slammed the brake. “What the hell is that?”

Neilsen turned toward me. He was wearing a hard-shell, full-face mask. Black, with big white letters across the forehead: “NOT TODAY, SATAN.”

“I lost a bet,” he said.

“I’ll say. You can’t teach in that.”

“I have a plan to work it into my lecture.”

“You’ll be fired.”

“I’m tenured.”

“There are loopholes,” I said.

And I was right.

I wrote this story in response to the Story-a-Day Challenge (storyaday.org). The prompt required having a character wear the mask described. Once again, I chose to write a drabble, a story of exactly 100 words.

Homecoming

By Jim Anderson

Lord Galt’s return to the Castle of the Mountain Kingdom was sudden and unexpected. It had to be so. The King had been vocal in his criticism of his uncle. His words stopped short of condemnation, and yet were poison in the minds of his loyal subjects. He may as well have pronounced the Syllables of Doom. But Galt made it through, and brought with him the Board of Inspection, rescued from a garbage heap in Maldenar, each of its seventy hooks still bearing an iron latchkey. The King, delighted at the retrieval of his keyboard, forgave his uncle everything.

I wrote “Homecoming” in response to the Story-a-Day Challenge (storyaday.org). The prompt for today required using ten specific words in a story. I chose to write a drabble, a story of exactly 100 words.

Here is the story with the ten words bolded in the text:

Lord Galt’s return to the Castle of the Mountain Kingdom was sudden and unexpected. It had to be so. The King had been vocal in his criticism of his uncle. His words stopped short of condemnation, and yet were poison in the minds of his loyal subjects. He may as well have pronounced the Syllables of Doom. But Galt made it through, and brought with him the Board of Inspection, rescued from a garbage heap in Maldenar, each of its seventy hooks still bearing an iron latchkey. The King, delighted at the retrieval of his keyboard, forgave his uncle everything.

Until you walk it

By Jim Anderson

Jerry limped to the top of the hill, then stopped. The two-lane blacktop wound down the hill and disappeared into the trees. Beyond the trees, out of sight, lay the river.

Jerry had driven this road many times, hundreds of times, but never walked it. You don’t know a road until you walk it, he thought.

He looked back. A gauzy haze hung on the horizon. Three black threads of smoke rose into the gray sky.

Nothing moved on the road. No cars. No people. No dogs.

Jerry’s feet hurt. His shoes were not made for this.

He went on.

I wrote this story for the 100 Word Challenge: Road at Thin Spiral Notebook.

Tony’s baby

By Jim Anderson

Parenthood hit Tony Lawson like a summer storm. Yes, very much like that. A sudden, unexpected stroke of fury, a violent collision of opposing fronts.

“Tony, you jerk, meet your son.”

The sky was cloudless above the executive lot, but the air crackled around the words.

Tony fumbled his iPhone, and it fell toward the brilliant concrete.

He caught it, held it against his heart.

There stood Sandra behind his silver S-Class, rolling a big navy-blue stroller forward a few inches and then pulling it back, coming closer each time to the rear-bumper of the coupe.

My baby! he thought.

I wrote this story for the 100 Word Challenge: “Parent” at Thin Spiral Notebook.

Fragment of a memoir

By Jim Anderson

“The thing is,” Papa said, “everybody gets that story wrong. They always think the baby died.”

“Well, sure,” I said. “What else?”

Papa shook his head. “The baby didn’t die. The mother doesn’t want the shoes.” He finished his gin martini and motioned to the barkeep for another.

The fan turned ponderously above our heads.

“But why?” I asked.

“The shoes are a gift from the mother-in-law. You see? There’s a conflict. The women don’t get along. The ad is a knife in the ribs.”

“That’s a lot of iceberg under the water.”

Papa grinned and raised his glass. “Salute!”

I wrote this story for the 100 Word Challenge: “Memoir” at Thin Spiral Notebook.

Her name is Future

By Jim Anderson

The streets of Kal teamed with festival-goers. Nothing draws crowds like the prospect of burning a woman at the stake.

Even a good drawing-and-quartering runs a distant second.

“Her name is Future,” Proffer said as we made our way back to the inn.

I knew he was referring to the accused. The anguish in his voice surprised me. “You know her?”

Proffer nodded. “As do you. She’s the baker’s daughter, the girl you flirted with our first day here.”

“I do not ‘flirt’!”

“You do. And you marked her by it.”

“But –”

“It’s clear they know what you are.”

I wrote this fiction for the 100 Word Challenge “Future” at Thin Spiral Notebook.

Also see Part I of this story: If the gods be merciful.