Forgivenby Daniel MillernThe night was dark and rainy, the kind of night when no one wants to be out. Roosevelt Franklin Simonson was walking toward his car in the parking lot behind the store. This was going to be a big sale that would give him the extra money he needed for a special dinner with his wife and daughters. Praise the Lord! They were his pride and joy. They were faithful to their Lord and Savior and gave him a reason to thank his heavenly Father daily. Roosevelt loved his wife, Sharon, and was blessed to have her as his partner for life. They had been married since graduating college twelve years ago. It had been rocky at the start, but she asked him to go to church with her for Christmas one year. He realized that he needed to turn his life over to the Lord. Now he followed his Lord’s will seeking to give Him thanks for every blessing.
Category: Short story
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Cumulative Earnings:
$0.00
Rank: 76
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Month's Earnings:
$0.00
Rank: 76 Hanging Waspby Cori JonesPART ONE: HARVARD UNIVERSITY, SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1998: Vinca She figures she has an eating disorder, but what the fuck. After all, she spits. It goes like this: she never eats more than half of her regular meals. Divides the stuff on her plate--veggies, meat, pizza, whatever--into The Half that goes into Her Stomach and The Half that Goes into the Garbage. But she’s always on guard against sweets, which she spits. She buys a whole cake, or a dozen donuts, maybe a whole box of gourmet cookies. Shuts herself somewhere secret, chews everything up, spits it all into a wad of napkins. Never swallows anything buttery, sugary; brushes her teeth--twice if it’s chocolate--when she’s finished. Never pukes. Been spitting ever since Harvard, ever since everything with Ann and the note she found under her pillow. Dearest Vinca, I’m leaving Harvard. I feel dishonorable and awful. I’m leaving you some notebooks you might find helpful. Love always, Ann. Does spitting count? She knows it’s not like sticking her finger down her throat five times a day or going on a water diet for three months so she can get down to seventy-two pounds. Still, she wonders if it does count for anything. Lately, she’s started spitting out half her dinner and breakfast too: eggs, meat, all the things that build your body up. But who would she ask about spitting? Mum? Mum would wipe away a tear (Crying, she once told Vinca, was too Irish.) and tell Vinca about all the years she spent wishing she could get off chemo and keep food down and now her daughter tells her this? Then she’d sigh, shake her head. At least I raised you to be polite. Just remember that people like us are always polite. But, Lovey, you’ve got to watch that mouth of yours. You spent too much time before college listening to nasty language in Harvard Square. Language? What language? During those days at Harvard Vinca heard about five new words an hour: metaphysical, punctilious, cryptic, quandary, postmodern. She had no idea what they meant or how a person could pull them out of their brain and use them. No way she’d picked up nasty language at Harvard. Actually, she hadn’t even picked it up in the Square, although she’d hung there with plenty of burnouts when she was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. She knew that her nasty language came out of Mum’s cancer. It started when she met Jerome Washington at Dana Farber, the cancer hospital that sits practically on top of Roxbury. Jerome used to hang at the main entrance, wearing cool shades and baggy shorts that hung down past his knees, talking nonstop in a soft rap rhythm. Big C hit and Man that’s spooky. You got pukey. Big C-pukey. Keep that food in your belly in your belly in your belly. Buy from me and your mind’s gonna float. Suck that pukey up in smoke. Smoke. Smoke. Weed. Right here. Vinca started hanging with Jerome when he became Mum’s regular pot-dealer. She used to meet him at the Roxbury Crossing T or on a bench down where Brattle meets Mount Auburn. They hung together for maybe two years, until the day he disappeared and she never saw him again.
Category: Novel
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Cumulative Earnings:
$340.00
Rank: 1
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Month's Earnings:
$0.00
Rank: 1 Harvey's Driveby Stephen HinesBack then I lived in a little town in West Virginia called Summersville. I never even knew there was anything else but that town till I was six. My family never went nowhere or did much of nothin. We lived in a beat up two-story white shack just down the street from the swimmin pool. My momma and daddy never did get along too much. They loved each other and all, but it just seemed like they was always makin each other mad. Sometimes they’d be fightin and screamin and me and Rick, my brother, would just hide in our room. I was just a little kid then, so I’d get all upset and bawl like a baby, coverin my ears so I couldn’t hear. ‘Course I could still hear it all, pots and pans bangin around, Momma screamin for daddy to stop. Rick, he just stood there starin at me, his eyes bulging out like he’d seen a ghost, then he’d ask me if I was alright. He always acted like he wasn’t scared or nothin. Like it didn’t get to him. Sometimes he’d find me hidin under my bed, cryin like a sissy, and he’d tell me to quit it. He tried to make it sound like he was mad, but I could hear his voice shakin, just not as bad as mine was. Still, he meant okay, I guess. Just tryin to be tough. One of us had to be.
Category: Short story
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Cumulative Earnings:
$0.00
Rank: 32
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Month's Earnings:
$0.00
Rank: 26 One of Those Daysby Simon MarshlandLooking down at Harry’s body, a lifeless doll lying there loose and disjointed, rain slicking his hair turning the dark welling blood to an anaemic pink, it seemed incredible I had found this pitiful creature so intimidating a few short minutes ago. His eyes were open, staring sightlessly into the void. The same pale fishy grey eyes that moment earlier had gazed at me in sadistic pleasure, devoid of compassion as I begged and pleaded with him to make them stop. My chest was on fire from cigar burns and the broken fingers on my right hand made me light headed with pain. Trust Harry to break the right hand, the evil bastard knew just what a right hand of broken fingers meant to a technician. In a fit of rage I stuck my foot under his body and rolled it off the jetty. He hit the dark water with scarcely a splash and sank like a stone. Funny that, I always thought bodies floated. Harry’s didn’t, but then I think he had a pressing appointment in hell. The effort made me dizzy and I hung on to the rail for a while to catch my breath before tackling the two goons. The force of the bullets had blown one of them over the guard rail, leaving him hanging doubled over like a puppet with the strings cut, while the other lay face down, clutching what was left of his stomach. ‘Good, hope it bloody hurt,’ I muttered and kicked him over the edge to join Harry. The effort brought back the dizziness and I lent against the rail as rational thought processes began to return bringing with them the question of who had saved me and why? Who had gunned down Harry and his goons? It had to be either an act of gangster revenge or because they had something the killers wanted. It didn’t take an Einstein to work out which and I felt a block of ice begin to form deep in my guts. No professional would hit three people in cold blood and let the fourth live to be a witness out of kindness. I was only alive because whoever they were thought I knew where the case was. Harry, whoever he was, had believed the same thing. I never knew his real name. ‘Call me Harry,’ he had said, thin lips twisting in parody of a smile. ‘That is while you can still talk,’ he had added before nodding to his thugs to break the first finger. The sadistic bastard had enjoyed it too. He must have known no sane man would face the agony of having his fingers snapped one after the other for the sake of a God damned suitcase. I would have denied my mother, betrayed my closest friends and bared the secrets of my soul to avoid pain like that. Not that it would have helped, I hadn’t a clue what it was all about, didn’t even know where the bloody thing was. But of course none of the believed me.
Category: Short story
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Cumulative Earnings:
$0.00
Rank: 62
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Month's Earnings:
$0.00
Rank: 61
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