This short story is in response to the Five Minute Friday prompt: Work. The rules are: write for 5 minutes and no editing (although I can’t stop myself a little. I am an editor after all). I’ll see you on the other side. Hope you enjoy it.
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Her name is Hope, and she sits bowed in the corner, pouring herself into a painting. A cord sprouts from the base of her enormous earphones and tethers her still…at least for the moment.
Voices leak through the music, and she swats them away.
Not real. Right? They’re not real.
She glances from the angel emerging from her canvas to the community room, expecting it to be empty. Instead, a woman glances up from her sketchpad, breaks in a sunrise smile, and then returns to her sketch.
Hope knows what most everyone sees when they look at her—crooked glasses, hair so bleached it’s broken, uneven, sharp uncontrollable movements that make even the most compassionate volunteer nervous.
But this woman smiled. Continue reading “The Story of Hope: A Short Story”
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Sam climbed the ladder, his sore back muscles protesting each hand hold. It was the last peach tree to trim out and he’d be done. Well, at least for this season.
I hang suspended
This story is in response to the Five Minute Friday prompt: Guide. The rules are: write for 5 minutes and no editing (although I can’t stop myself a little. I am an editor after all).
For Five Minute Friday, I usually write a short story. The character “magically” appear in my mind along with how they feel and what’s happening. Normally, I can see a scene—a rise in the action and the fall. (It’s a lovely byproduct of telling stories for YEARS…until someone catches you actually talking to yourself.)
She stands on the threshold big toe hanging over and it makes her heart beat just as fast as the cars driving across her little house.
He stood, flanked by metal bars that stretched long in front of him. The sweat of his hands threatened to break his grip, spill him pell-mell onto the floor. This, the first time he’d been out of a chair or bed since the accident, and he was destined to make a fool of himself in front of every single person in the room.
She closed her eyes against the gaping white canvas. There was a time when she could get lost inside a world of her own making. Just her and a paint brush against the boring gray world of school institutions and suburban life.
Last weekend I attended a Writer’s Conference as part of the faculty (for those of you not familiar that means I was there working as my editor persona). The odd thing about conferences is that I tend to come away with little nuggets even when I’m not officially attending. And this one was no different.