Verbally Challenged Short Stories (Volume 1)
Enjoy 150 original, instantly downable short stories. Some teasers follow:
NO WASTE
Karen Maddox hated waste. She gave all paper products to her worm farm, recycled tins and plastic, and composted all garden scraps. Rainwater was harvested and all wastewater used on the garden. She had a dream, our Karen, that one day there would be no waste at all. Karen always bought her clothes and shoes from op shops and garage sales. Verge collections were positively exhilarating. Her whole house was furnished from the side of the road. She longed to go a whole year without purchasing anything and she was working towards it. The ends of the spring onions, bought once, had kept producing for years. She never bought vegetables and herbs, growing hers from the seeds of last year's crop. She bartered and bargained for all she needed. No waste! was her motto, and she lived by it. It became an obsession...
SHOULD HAVE GONE TO....
Every now and then, a headline strikes you and proves that there are people out there who need to wear their glasses. Such as the headline which read "Missippi's Literacy Program Shows Improvement" and the more recent one where "'Breast implant' in police murder mystery probe turned out to be jellyfish". But truth is stranger than fiction, especially when it concerns my family. I told you my bloodline is unique, and it is, because its members could provide endless inspiration for stories, both fictional and non-fictional. In my family, the "Should have gone to..." goes, without question, to my grandmother, Rita. Lovely lady, who I miss like crazy...but she had a proud streak. Didn't like to wear her glasses unless she had to. Until....
THE DREAM
Andy sat up in bed, looking washed out. Lauren, his wife, gave him a sideways hug. "Again?" she asked kindly. "Yeah," he sighed. "Fourth night in a row. She's there, in the snow, all by herself. I try to get to her, but I can't. It's like someone has put a wall between us." "Hmmm," Lauren said. "It's really weird. You can't think of anything in your past that might have triggered it?" "No," he shook his head. "I've never seen anyone like her. Never been in a situation like that." "Tell me everything you can remember about the dream. There must be something that's making it reappear night after night." Andy took a deep breath...
