Tag: dreams

Addicted to Story

Photo by Dale Anderson

With Apologies and Thanks to Robert Palmer

I might as well admit it, I’m addicted to Story.  I do not remember the first time I heard a story.  I DO remember the first time I read an entire story on my own.  But by then I was maybe six years old and had been “on the narrative” for years.

My parents read to me before I could read myself and told me stories of their childhoods.  I could not get enough.

Story was soothing at the end of a tough day when I couldn’t sleep.  Then it was soothing at the end of ANY day.  Soon I needed story in the middle of the day.  Before long I was reading stories at the breakfast table.

In Third grade I would come home from school and write MY OWN stories.

Thankfully, college and grad school were story-dry years.  Textbooks occupied my reading hours; tests, term papers and thesis projects commanded my writing efforts.  My work life was mathematics and memos.

Eventually, I had two children and Story came back into my life.  I read to them and told them stories of my childhood.  But it didn’t stop there.

I took them to the local public library for more stories and checked out books for myself.  I read late at night after the kids had gone to bed.  In the morning, I read at the breakfast table.

I started writing again.  I don’t want to stop . . . my keyboard is calling me.  I thought I was immune to this stuff but I’m going to have to face it, I’m addicted to Story.

Robin Anderson

Week End

Free image from flikr.com/the commons

The city grew quiet. A Friday exhalation.

 Humans expelled over the countryside in their cars in a single sigh.

Two days away from work and worry, a slim chance to breath.

So the city can rest.

Then.  Again.

A gasping Monday inhalation as the metropolis sucks them all back. Into the dark lung of commerce.

Robin Anderson

CHANGES

TheNightMail is changing!! You may have noticed the new WordPress theme. But wait, there’s more!

TheNightMail was originally created as a show place for Becky and Robin’s short fiction related to their screenwriting project, FREAKTOWN. It soon morphed into a straight out site for Flash Fiction accompanied by carefully curated images. It was not long before poetry, particularly haiku, made an appearance. More recently, there have been guest author contributions as well. Yes, evolution happens.

Now TheNightMail is changing again. Robin and Becky have returned to decades old writing habits and are producing novels and novellas under TheNightMail imprint. These farcical romance and mystery stories have historical settings, so you will find new sections on the blog devoted to “Regency”, “Flash Facts” and “Publications”. We will still endeavor to punch out flash fiction pieces for your consideration but hope you’ll click around the site and see what else is available in longer form.

Thanks for reading.

Image from flickr commons

Just Before Sunset

The waxing moon hung in a diaphanous cloud.  He remembered to look down just before he flew over the river.  There she was, looking up.  He could count on her.  Every evening, at sunset, looking up; looking for him.  Once she waved and seemed to beckon him.

As a youngling, he’d considered trying to meet her, his faithful watcher.  But one of the elders, his grandfather or a great uncle, had warned him off.  “Not a good idea.  Women like that are untrustworthy.”

As he grew older, he grew to understand why.  She was a human.  He was a crow.

Image by Robin Anderson

Tom

Once there was a man on a commune in the Canadian wilds. His name was Tom.

One misty moisty morning, we jumped in my Volkswagen bus and hightailed it for the California desert. He was running—I was in love.

A year we spent squatting on that mining claim in the Chocolate Mountains, living a whiskey fantasy, surviving on beans, rattlesnake, and the kindness of others.  I sang for tips in the small-town bar. He got by on charm.

 Finally Tom tired of me-it was inevitable. I returned to my Canadian island. He kept running.

Don’t tell my husband, but sometimes I think of him still.

By Mollie Hunt

photo by Ajay-Karpur on unsplash

Female Trouble

She was leaking.  Again.  It seemed only to happen in public.  At home it was never a problem.  She could sit for hours reading or working out mathematical equations.  Even when staring at the clouds or stars and theorizing, there was no seepage.

But out shopping, at tea, in a ballroom and especially at the subscription library, she had only to open her mouth and the trickle, then torrent, of her words, opinions and knowledge flooded the air.

Her intelligence on hideous display and before she could ratchet her jaw shut, the whispers began all round.

“Bluestocking.”

Image: Portrait of MME De Graffigny by Pierre Mignard via flickr commons

Power Down

Tonight I write by candlelight.  A scheduled outage they said.

No light, no heat, no electronic hum but in the shadows story pours from my pen.  Stream of consciousness, words flow like water or wine or my own blood.

Now I know I should have contrived a blackout long ago.

Image by Robin Anderson

Power Down originally published at fiftywordstories.com on 

Quiet Like Sunday

Listen.

Quiet like Sunday on the first of Spring.  No traffic, no voices, no airplanes.  Only birdsong or a dog barking.

Listen.

Humanity withdraws and the world settles into silence.  People in houses gaze through closed windows.  They can hear sunlight drip off buildings and roar down empty streets.

Listen.

Image by Harrison Fulop

This story also appears at fiftywordstories.com 

Skyhawk

In his carefree youth, he and the camera were inseparable.  When a daredevil friend took him flying in a one engine plane, the camera went along.  They flew off the coast, over the Pacific, getting the bird’s eye of trees, cliffs and sea stacks, cold wind seeping into the cockpit.  He clicked the shutter a hundred times.  Back on earth, he printed a dozen images.  In one, the sepia sea gleams like glass, the sky stretches into silence.

Much later, his adult children gaze at the old photograph, smell naphtha-kerosene and feel the dip and rattle of the Skyhawk.

Image by Chris A Anderson, courtesy of the Estate of Chris A Anderson