The 365 Stories Project – Month One
Liane Little
Hope Flies Copyright © 2005 by Liane Little
All Other Stories © 2010 by Liane Little
Published by Liane Little at Smashwords.com, 2010
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Graphic: © nuttakit – freedigitalphotos.net
Cover Design: Liane Little
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank, as always, my friends and family for all of their support.
I'd also like to send a shout out to everyone who has been following The 365 Stories Project blog. You're terrific!
A Girl's Best Friend And A Man's Worst Nightmare
Things That Go Bump In The Woods
The 365 Stories Project started off as a challenge. A challenge to write a short story, usually under 1000 words, every day for a full year.
As the first week passed, writing every morning got to be routine and now I find that, in addition to being challenging, it is also a way to steal some relaxation first thing in the morning.
I hope that you continue to follow the blog and read the stories as they come out.
The theory behind it is that one story is posted on the blog each day and each month will become an ebook. Paperback version containing all of the stories will be released when the project is finished. This particular volume contains the stories posted between October 16th, 2010 and November 15th 2010.
Enjoy!
The little boy played in the park alone, bouncing a small red ball back and forth between his hands. Ground, left hand, ground, right hand.
The ball eventually bounced against the toe of his shoe and skittered across the grass at high speed. It rolled to a stop in front of a man. Not just any man. The scariest looking on in the entire park.
The boy crept toward the dark jacketed man and paused. It was only when he opened his mouth to speak and his eyes dropped that he noticed the man already held the ball tightly in his fist, so tightly that the man easily succeeded in flattening it completely.
The man glared at the little boy, daring him to run and tell his parents. A slow malicious smiled crossed his face. “You're not getting it back.”
The boy cocked his head to one side and contemplated his options. He returned the man's smile and dipped his hand into his pocket.
“That's alright,” the boy quipped as he bounced a second ball of of the man's forehead. “I have another.”
The man stared adoringly at the painting on the wall. He had been in the modern art museum staring at it for hours, memorizing each intricate detail.
He bit his lip as feelings of guilt overcame him. He cared more about the careful paint strokes than his wife. Should he go home to her or should he say here, mesmerized by his new love?
“Screw it,” he thought bitterly as his eyes roamed across the sesame seeds, lettuce, and meat that belonged to the hamburger posing on the wall. “She never should have put me on a diet.”
It was cold, dreary. I longed to be inside where it was warm. My hair was sopping, dripping into puddles at my feet. Angry growls erupted from my stomach in regular, yet inevitable intervals. It had been days since the last time I had eaten and the people living within the house before me had been the ones kind enough to provide those tasty morsels.
The question now was whether or not I could swallow my still-stinging pride and bed a second time for relief. It went against everything in me, but I couldn’t stand the hunger pains any longer. I whined as I shivered and debated with myself. The debate was cut short as the wooden doors before me swung open and revealed the owner of the house in a bright triangle of light.
I lowered my eyes, forlorn, unable to even look at her gentle face to make my pitiful request. When I raised my eyes at last, I found her smiling brightly. “I was wondering when you were going to come back!” My head tipped to one side and I looked at her with questions in my eyes. “Come on, you poor puppy. This is going to be your home now.”
My tail wagged ecstatically with a mind of its own as my paws carried me eagerly toward my new family.
The woman walked slowly down the pre-dawn street with her head bowed under the weight of her thoughts. Her shift at the hospital had just ended but, as eager as she was for sleep, she was dreading the return to the home where silence and sadness reigned.
Her lower lip began to tremble. How is it, she wondered, that she was so undeniably capable of bringing so much happiness and hope into the world but was unable to do the same for herself?
Her frown deepened as she unlocked and opened the door to her dark apartment. The familiar ache in her heart shifted to near agony as she stopped at the second door in the hallway and looked in toward the lacy bassinet that cried out for an occupant that never made it home.
Think about Baby Atkinson, she willed herself.
There! There was the distraction she so desperately needed.
She had spent months preventing his mothers amniotic fluid from leaking and sending her into dangerous pre-term labour. It was only that morning that it she was able to finally bring that lucky little boy into the world safely. She had been fortunate enough to give that kind of joy to many families over the years. There was absolutely nothing to compare the glowing faces of the parents to. The only thing better was the feel of a warm, sleeping baby in her arms.
I'll keep saving you, my sweet, baby Maggie, she thought gazing lovingly at the empty crib. I will always keep saving you.
“What do you want from me?” Aaron shouted into the empty room. “I don't have anything!”
An eerily musical voice came from the ether. “I want your soul. It's so bright I can nearly taste it.”
Before Aaron could speak, there was a loud bang and a spectacular fire that burned itself out in seconds. “His soul is mine, demon!” growled the hooded form that appeared. “Not like you really want it anyway.”
“Really?” the voice mused. “What did you get it for, Satan?”
“An engagement ring.”
“Oh? How'd that go?”
Satan laughed too hard to reply. Once he recovered, he answered, “She dumped him. He's too nice and devoted.”
With that, the empty room disappeared, leaving Aaron with his soul intact in a field pondering his choice in women.
“You aren't going to the party looking like that! What will people think?” Sherry yelled at her daughter.
Gretta stood with clothing at her feet, the reject pile. She retorted instantly. “I'm sixteen! I can wear what I want!”
Greta stormed past her mother and stomped through the front door. On the way to the party, she kept her head raised proudly and ignored the many naked people who gaped at her t-shirt and jeans.
I grinned and ran as fast as I could toward the box ahead of me. The box glinted sharply in the the dim light and my brown hair flowed behind me like a chocolate coloured banner.
The thrill of being somewhere we weren't allowed ran through my veins as I gauged the distance while I ran, easily calculating the perfect time to raise my foot onto the box and throw myself high into the air. I heard cheering behind me as my friends watched my act of daring and waited for their turns.
I twisted in the air gracefully before I hit the water with an echoing splash. It took a split second before my fingertips touched the bottom of the pool. I let my self sink a few more inches, flipped over then launched myself to the surface.
“What did you think?” I sputtered, swimming to the edge. There was no response. As rowdy as we were before and during my dive, I knew there was something seriously wrong in the silence. We got caught! I thought frantically. My eyes went to Darren, the closest of the bunch of us. His own eyes were locked on the pool.
I pulled myself up and turned to follow the groups collective gaze. My knees went weak as I caught sight of an object floating in the pool.
No, not an object. A body.
The girl looked to be about my height with long dark hair flowing wistfully along with the small current in pool.
The others showed the same look of horror that I felt playing across my face. It wasn't anyone from that broke into the pool that night but the town was small. It was one hundred percent guaranteed that we knew this unfortunate person.
More than that, the swimsuit that the girl wore would be known anywhere in town. It was the same one that I and another girl in our haggard group had donned before coming. It was standard issue for the town's competitive swim team.
Suddenly, they were all talking at once. No-one mentioned who she might be, trying to ignore the pain that was sure to come after she was identified, I thought.
“Oh, my God!”
“We should call the police...”
“We gotta get out of here!” Darren's voice, as the leader of our little group that night, overrode everyone else's and everyone bolted. Everyone except me.
I could leave. I had enough time to. But there was no way that I could leave her floating anonymously and aimlessly in the pool face down. I watched the others leave. None of them begged me to follow. They were only concerned with saving themselves from an arrest and conviction on break and entering into the community pool.
Once the last frantic steps fled from the building, I tiptoed my way around the pool to get myself closer to her then lowered myself in slowly with terrified tears streaming down my cheeks.
I had yet to see the girl move so I harboured no hope of resuscitation. I could have taken all the time in the world to get her out, but there was still a sense of urgency, along with mystery. I had to see who it was that I would be grieving for.
She was light and easy to guide to the shallow end of the pool. I worked as quickly as I could. My eyes avoided looking at her face until I had her laid out gently on the concrete.
It wasn't until I bent over her and brushed her soaked and matted hair away from her face. My breath hitched in my throat and my chest constricted until I couldn't breathe at all. I couldn't believe what I saw.
The chocolate hair, the swim team suit, her build. I should have known. We all should have known. There was only one person who looked like that.
My cousin's cold dead eyes stared up at me from the deck of the pool.
My boyfriend and I were walking lazily down the street window shopping. There wasn't really any sort of reason behind it. We just thought we would kill some time before our dinner reservations.
Suddenly, something sparkling in display across the street grabbed my attention, the same time the sports store caught his attention. There was quite the internal debate as I struggled with the decision between staying with him in the sports store or scamper off to my jewelry store across the road. Eventually the choice was made.
Rather than drag him away from his obsession, I left him there and waited a few minutes for the lights to change at the intersection. It was only seconds after the lights changed, allowing me enough time to step into the intersection, that I heard my boyfriend's voice calling to me. “Dodge!”
I turned and smiled at him questioningly. There was no way that I could make sense of that one word. “What?”
His face was full of fear. I had only enough time to hear him yell “Charger!” before I was overcome by blinding pain.
I saw the white markings of the crosswalk fly by as I was hurled through the air. The only way to describe my landing was bone-crunching. I could almost swear that every bone in my body crunched. Dazed and in agony, I turned my head to see what had happened as my boyfriend came running to my side.
“Are you okay? I tried to warn you...”
I looked at him with as much anger as I could muster through the pain. “Couldn't you just say 'Car! Look out!'”?
“There's only so long anyone can take this,” I thought as I twirled the phone cord around my finger.