muse
Stories
7
Chapters
17
Words
19.6 K
Comments
0
Reading
1 h, 37 m
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prompt: a last-minute change in plans – “What a view!” his own voice echoed back at him as he snapped a picture of the gorge. Laughing, she pulled him back from the cliff and into her arms. It wouldn’t do to kill him yet, not until he’d changed the…
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prompt: a change in the weather – As the sun stroked the last of a flower’s faded petals, it said “Don’t be afraid” and it said “Go to sleep; you’ll see me again after the winter.” From a nearby garden another flower whispered, “But isn’t that one an annual?” “Shh,” beamed the…
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It was past four a.m. and he hadn’t slept. He needed to be up in a couple hours if he was going to make the meeting with his editor. He couldn’t postpone a fifth time. The storm had been raging since he’d gone to bed. The curtains were thick enough to block the lightning, but coastal storms always unsettled him. He could never sleep through the wind. He turned over, shoving a pillow over his head, but he could still hear it. His mother had called him a night owl since he was a child—better…-
4.2 K • Completed
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He had read of love in novels, prying its meaning from aging paper—something from another time, like the green forests he could only imagine. He looked for it on faces he encountered, and while he felt for every one, it was not love. He didn't like the boy when they met, and after he'd sent him down the trail, never expected to think about him again. He would not kiss him until they were twenty-six. That kiss would overturn his world, but it would not stop the exquisite ache in his…-
366 • Ongoing
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Ray visited his brother more often after his death than he had for a decade. On Saturdays, he’d pick up a bouquet along with a week’s groceries and after lunch, carry it on the five-mile run that took him past the cemetery. He’d kneel before the grave, clear away last week’s flowers, pinch weeds slithering up the headstone. The fresh engraving was almost sharp to the touch. Simon Fisher, beloved husband. Ray hadn’t seen anyone else here since the funeral—not even her. The adjacent plot waited,…-
4.2 K • Completed
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On the weathered gray shingles of a neighboring shedthe sunlight reveals the image of a man crouched down, his head twisted to three-fourths profile, one eye open and vacant, shingles forming a jagged grin where a mouth should be. He’s creeping, paused, turned to look—sunlight striping his cheek, the side of his nose, shadow falling like hair across an invisible ear and aged shingles giving the appearance that the skin above his eye has rotted away. When the sun shifts he’ll be gone.…-
176 • Ongoing
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He came with the rain, decades ago when the forest here was still saplings, back when we were growing sod and Mama was crying every night that the drought would ruin us. I heard him before I saw him that first time, a cheerful whistle coming up the road. “Don’t talk to him,” the neighbors whispered. “That boy’s bad luck.” But he’d been friendly and young, as young as me, the only other person under thirty anyplace I could get to on foot. A year older, maybe two. I’d never asked.…-
2.2 K • Oneshot
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