Short Story
The Rule
This place has never pretended to be merciful. We learned that long ago—before the rivers shrank into memory, before the soil turned to powder, before hunger became the only language we all spoke fluently. Complaints evaporate here, same as everything else. The sun sees to that. It hangs above us like a watchful tyrant, a silent warden that neither sleeps nor softens, pressing its heat against our backs until even our shadows seem to wither.
By Kenneth Boutte12 days ago in Fiction
Annie After
Annie always said she was “handling things beautifully,” though no one had asked her to. In the days after Paul’s death, she moved through the house with the restless energy of someone who needed an audience. Lockdown meant there would be no funeral, no gathering, no public display of devotion. The absence of spectators unsettled her. She needed a stage, and grief—real or imagined—was her current favored script.
By Julie O'Hara - Author, Poet and Spiritual Warrior12 days ago in Fiction
Louise After
Louise didn’t attend a funeral because there wasn’t one. It was lockdown, and gatherings were forbidden. Paul’s body went straight from the hospital to the crematorium, and Annie collected the ashes in an urn she had made years earlier in a ceramic class. It was lopsided, glazed in streaky turquoise with hearts etched in the side—more craft project than vessel—and entirely wrong for him. But that was how things were done in Annie’s world: symbolism without substance, noise without meaning. And of course her name was carved in the bottom. She had to put her name on everything.
By Julie O'Hara - Author, Poet and Spiritual Warrior12 days ago in Fiction
The Last Confession of Paul Brennan
Paul Brennan had been dying for four days, though the truth was that something in him had been dying for forty years. The hospital room smelled of antiseptic and gardenias. A statute of Mother Mary on the bedstand and a cross hung over the bed. The hallway outside pulsed with the restless chatter of people who didn’t know how to sit still with death. Annie was among them—loud, frantic, and determined to turn the moment into a spectacle. She had always been that way. Aquarius sun, hurricane heart. Always trying to define the narrative that put her center stage.
By Julie O'Hara - Author, Poet and Spiritual Warrior12 days ago in Fiction
With Whatever Tools at Your Disposal . Content Warning.
”No soliciting, federal code 34b. Maximum penalty.” The old man gestures to the area where he knows the sign is posted. He fixes his rheumy eyes in a cold glare— towards the blur of a man standing before him.
By Sam Spinelli13 days ago in Fiction
LHS Class of 01 Reunion '16
Another alumnus, now a software engineer, spoke about the day Mrs. Wilkes introduced a simple coding exercise in a math class, saying, “She made us see that logic isn’t confined to numbers; it’s a language we all speak.” The collective narrative painted a portrait of a woman who, through gentle discipline and unyielding optimism, shaped a generation of diverse professionals, all linked by the common thread of having once been her pupil.
By Forest Green13 days ago in Fiction
LHS Class of 01 Reunion '16
Students—now adults with briefcases, tattoos, and children in tow—milled about, exchanging updates about careers, marriages, and the occasional misadventure involving a misplaced mortgage payment. In the center of the bustling scene, a long wooden table was laden with platters of finger foods, a towering chocolate cake bearing a handwritten “Happy Retirement, Mrs. Wilkes!” in glossy frosting, and a modest, polished podium that would soon witness a cascade of heartfelt speeches. The scent of roasted chicken mingled with the faint perfume of fresh lilies, a subtle homage to the teacher who had once insisted that “a good education smelled like curiosity, not cafeteria pizza.” The hum of conversation rose and fell like a familiar chorus, each voice stitching together the fragmented memories of a generation that had once been shepherded by a woman whose patience seemed as endless as the school’s hallway lockers.
By Forest Green13 days ago in Fiction
