Love
Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary,
“Platonic flowers for platonic occasions.” It has become one of his mantras as he transitions from victim of unrequited love to being just her good friend. He does not want to lose the best parts of her for wanting all of her. As for flowers, he has never, nor would he ever, buy her roses. That is too cliché for someone as unique, amazing, and enigmatic as her. When she started her new consulting practice, he bought an orchid plant the size of a small tree. “She looks like a woman who would love orchids.” It was a lucky guess. A year later, remembering her excitement from the first, combined with a lack of originality, he bought another orchid for Mother’s Day. Three years passed before he bought her an arrangement of assorted flowers for “Best Friend’s Day”, a little-known holiday set aside on June 8th. For someone desperately in love with someone else, who rebuffs with “I think of you as a friend”, Best Friend Day seems a reasonable alternative to National Unrequited Love Day.
By Alexander J. Cameron5 years ago in Fiction
The End of the Beginning
The rations were almost gone. The water and the dried bars. All of it. Tom dug the heels of his palms into his reddened eyes and looked out across the open water, looking for any sign of land. All he could see were waves with white crests, blue sky and yellow orb reflected upon the undulating surface, and those dreaded triangular fins circling. It had been nearly a week since he escaped the cruise ship, a week since his girlfriend passed in her sleep as the virus overtook the liner.
By Brian Gracey5 years ago in Fiction
A Losing Game
Every day, he wakes up at five AM, not a minute before, not one minute after. He stretches his tired body and puts on his slippers. They are his favorite color, blue. With achy joints and sluggish posture, he makes his way into our kitchen. The smell of coffee fills our home. I watch him as he reads the paper in the recliner next to mine.
By Olivia Nicole5 years ago in Fiction
Do You Still Love Me?
Maya September 2nd has always been a special day for me and my husband, Jason. We first met back in 2013 on September 2nd. He walked into my flower shop, The Wild ‘N Beautiful Flower Shop. He walked in smiling. His red shirt glowed against his lightly melanated skin that had been sunkissed by the summer sun. He told me his mother’s birthday was the following day and what kind of flowers he should get her. I suggested an aster bouquet, the birth flower for September. He smiled and then asked me what my favorite flower was. I told him marigold, which is my birth month flower, October. He smiles telling me that might be his new favorite flower. That’s how our story began.
By Natasha Avery5 years ago in Fiction
I'm a Girl Shark and this is My Love Story
I knew he watched me from afar. I could feel his eyes following me everywhere I went, but I didn't mind. My fins attracted him, I think. My dorsal - like a large white sail - on the top of my back, and my two huge, shiny pectoral fins. The ocean never felt so big, or so beautiful as when I was underwater, gliding from one reef to another.
By Irina Patterson5 years ago in Fiction
The Smell of Magic
I wish I had known what I was before I had done what I did. For I am a witch, born into my powers and was untrained in my abilities. I was a scientist many years ago. But now I hide and run. I am in fear for my life. I alone am responsible for revealing the supernatural world to the humans. I honestly know nothing of the supernatural world before I brought it crashing into the sunlight, bright and fierce and terrifying to the world of the humans.
By Arkady Thompson5 years ago in Fiction
Call of the Water
Call of the Water There had always been something about the water that drew Pree’s curiosity. Perhaps it was the sheer beauty of the ocean at sunrise, when the sun began to stretch and yawn itself awake bit by bit, casting a gentle glow atop the still surface; or maybe it was the way it swayed with an unnatural elegance when the wind blew against it in the early Spring months, proving to be a much better dancer than she or any in her castle.
By Tiffany Dian Lefler5 years ago in Fiction
Words of Winter Water
“If a story on paper could be told with more than words, the whole world would read it.” She told me the first time we hung out and sat under the maple tree by the pond that Autumn afternoon. The grass was dead and crunched beneath our feet like the tires of my old, red Ford on her gravel driveway when I would drive her home before curfew. The leaves danced with the wind, spinning pirouettes before leaping from their branches to join in the Fall’s beautiful recital. And the water stood still, like shimmering glass on a midsummer afternoon.
By Adriana Katriel Brown5 years ago in Fiction
