Short Story: Father's Little Boy

I’m spending lot of time with father and mother worries about it. I don’t see what is wrong though. I enjoy assisting him during his mending binges. Mother calls him ‘Mr. Fixo’. He has an elaborate set of tools. Sometimes he takes them out for overhauling. He oils, wipes and rubs them with flannel to get the rust off and explains to me their function and working. It isn’t a woman’s job he says because it requires a lot of precision and focus. We do not talk while mending because he says that unlike women, men never talk while working. The texture of the hurt it causes me when he says that never leaves me. I wish mother would make a little less noise with her tongue and not make father say such things. Mother’s voice calling me sounds very distant as I am just getting out of a dream and it takes me a few minutes to regain my orientation. She is relentless with her tongue while disposing off the domestic remains of the previous day.

Short Story: Please Forgive Our Sin

“Before we laid this man to rest…, maybe any of you want to say the last words to remember him by?” asked a priest to a very limited people who gather around on a funeral.

“He is a nice father, “sobbed a man while pretending wipes his tears with his handkerchiefs. “…And an old stingy bastard who left me nothing but the house!” silently he cursed.

Short Story: Budi's Back

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This story will end in separation. Tara felt this, as she stared at her husband’s back that night. Budi always slept with his back facing her. After he turned the light off. After they made love. Or after he finished reading. Budi said his left ribcage would hurt whenever he slept on his left, facing Tara. Two of his left ribs were broken during a basketball game when he was in high-school. They’re surely healed by now, but Budi said they still hurt whenever he slept facing left.

Short Story: Black Box From Hell

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I’m in hell. And he was a frequent flier.

I don’t fall in love too easily but when I do, I can get pretty intense. I never knew what he did for a living. Probably what Edward Norton did in “Fight Club” or whatever it was that George Clooney did in “Up In The Air”. Something corrupt like that. Not that I cared if he did something corrupt for a living, he was good-looking. All I knew was that he requested kosher meals, liked window seats, preferred pulp fictions over in-flight entertainment, and flew to the same destinations every once in a while: New York, Bangkok, Nairobi, Geneva, Vienna, Beirut, and Santiago. He knew me by “Femke” and I called him “Mr. Contini” until he insisted I call him “Daniel”.

Short Story: Actus Dei

[ed - This entry is one of the Top 12 Popular Vote Finalists for English Language Entries]

My heart was beating fast, racing with the clock as its wands constantly tick and tock. Chill was brought to my spine as both excitement and doubt crept into my nerves. I reached my hand toward the wooden handle.

Is this even right? I told myself. There would be no turning back after this, right?

The door creaked quietly as I pulled it back, taking a step by a step on the porcelain floor. My ears captured the sound of Gregorian chants, sung in harmony by soprano and contralto. I saw petals of roses scattered on the path I was walking in, washed in pink and white. It was beautiful indeed, but my heart still would not calm down.

Short Story: Flying Jaguar

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People called him Jack. His carving knife was as sharp as the fangs of a jaguar.

[A jaguar did not need much water. There used to be a fresh water hole across the street. The water was sweet. It was long gone now. A pub replaced it. The water was also sweet but it intoxicating. A jaguar went to a fresh water hole at dusk to drink and to catch a prey. After drinking he would sit on a log and sharpen his claws on a piece of wood.]

Short Story: The Man In Front of Me

There he was, standing before me with his slanted black eyes and long eyelashes. Back when I was a child, I used to say “you have a camel’s eyelashes.” And you will reply, “Yes, a camel has long eyelashes to protect its eyes from sand.” It just who you are, a man with an explanation.

Short Story: The Cherry Blossoms

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“Winter is almost here..”

That is the only line she can think of when she looks through her bedroom window. The freezing cold air touches her pale skin when she stretches out her right arm through the small opening on that window. “ugh…It’ll be harsh this month…” she mumbles. Light haze coming out from her nostrils. She still remembers what has happened last month. It seemed like only yesterday.

Short Story: Alley Cats

[ed - This entry is one of the Top 12 Popular Vote Finalists for English Language Entries]

Zipping my thin jacket I leave the goldsmith´s, provoked by the idea that anyone can afford those diamond necklaces. It is beastly cold, and the streets are teeming with Christmas-crazed shoppers.

My few errands took longer than expected. No chance of catching a bus now so I cross the square and slip down a narrow street. Now I´ll have to walk all the way home. I turn another corner, only accompanied by sleepy street lights.

Short Story: The Line

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“Sir, you cut the line.”

The man turned his head to me as I grabbed his hand.

“I need to see her,” he said.

I nodded. “Yes, but there are hundreds of people waiting to get in, just like you. Why don’t you go back and get in line?”

“No! She’s inside and I need to be there quickly. Please, I just need to see her for a second.”

I should admit, I liked this man. If you didn’t understand the concept of gravity, you should look at him. He had this short black hair and clear brilliant brown eyes. I liked the way his lips moved and his grey oxford shirt.

Short Story: Different

[ed - This entry is one of the Top 12 Popular Vote Finalists for English Language Entries]

As usual, Jarwo always tell a lot of stories every time he had a chance to see Kodrat. This time it’s about Lani, the girl-next-door that he had crush on.

“I’m confused, Drat. Lani’s playing hard to get. Sometimes she was extremely attentive but in other time she just acted like I didn’t exist.”

Short Story: A Gorgeous Stranger

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Dressed in navy business attire, Jen walked into the restaurant to meet Peter for lunch. They’d been dating since he began working in the bank where she was an assistant manager. Standing tall at 180 cm, Peter looked charming with his warm smile and smart brown eyes. She wasn’t madly in love with him, but she was quite content with their relationship.

Short Story: Only Love

A glass of coke float in front of me had melted. Okay, this seems that the coke float was also tired of waiting. How long approximately, I dunno, maybe about an hour. Do I lack patience? It’s easy, all this uncertainty makes me sick. And now I’m like a prisoner. Waiting for a death sentence. I’m like people with HIV, who consoled myself that everything would be fine. Unceasingly I whispered a pray. Requested that what I feared most did not become a reality.

Short Story: Addiction

Its been a week since it’s been absent from my life and now it has returned. With the single desk lamp turned on in this dark working room, I get up and open the door in front of me, letting in the early night’s breeze in as my guest. The sky is turning dark as the sunset begins its travels into someone else’s sight. There is a sound, a rolling of a gate and the sound of my neighbor’s car coming in their driveway with a flashing glimpse of their headlight. I hear the sound of the call to prayer, a beautiful voice fragmented by the broken speaker.

Short Story: Polaroids

[ed - This entry is one of the Top 12 Popular Vote Finalists for English Language Entries]

The Polaroid photos lying sweetly in her hands, she looked at them carefully as her mind drifted to happy memories that she has still clung to.

***

It’s June 14th and she’s just about to be ready to leave the house. She packs her precious Polaroid camera, putting lip gloss on her lips once again, looks in the mirror and smiling to herself. ‘This is it’, she said to herself. I’m ready. Her fine figure is wrapped in an elegant black and white dress, which she bought with her salary from her part time job. *CLICK* sounds the door as she makes her way out of the house to the tram station.

Perhaps Today

[ed - This entry is one of the Top 12 Popular Vote Finalists for English Language Entries]

He cut himself.

It was a total accident. He was picking up pieces of a shattered mirror when a shard ran into his thumb. The glistening crumb freed a fiery drop of blood but the needlepoint of pain thrilled him. He raised the wound to his lips, tasted the salt. This is real. I am real. Today, he thought, perhaps today, they will see me.

That morning, he studied his reflection just before leaving for work. Regular in build, in height, in appearance; he was an extraordinarily ordinary man. His name tag gleamed dully from the lapel of his unremarkable coat; a nondescript garment, grey. He ran his fingers through his hair, slipped on his shoes and slipped out the door.

Alone in the Dark

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It was dark. And damp. Not a flicker of light enter. I felt something cold trickling on my nape and moved a little bit only to touch something wet and slippery. I was paralyzed by fear. Of what I didn’t know. I couldn’t even remember why I was here in the first place. I wanted to scream, but my lungs seemed to constrict against my will. Only silent tears running down my cheeks told me that I was still alive.

The Appointment in Samara

The speaker is Death

There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samara and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samara.

By W. Somerset Maugham

What?!

“Sinclair, come on. Time after us,” Austin shouted at Sinclair, his friend.

“Hold your horses. Relax. As long as I am here, everything is going to be smoothly going on. He… he… he…,” said Sinclair.

“I don’t like you,” Austin looked grouchy.

Dumb Kid

Guro, the young man who worked for Buck’s Shoe Shop, opened the store at eight even though he was supposed to open it at around nine. He wanted to show his boss that he was responsible to the store and able to be trusted. He vacuumed the rug and cleaned the shoe boxes.