Category: Fiction

As a young boy, Alex always looked up to his mother. She was strong, independent, and always put others before herself. Despite the challenges she faced as a single mother, she always found a way to provide for her family and make sure Alex had everything he needed. One summer, Alex’s mom decided to take […]

I stare at the words my teacher has carefully scratched onto the blackboard at the front of our classroom: “Where in the world is the safest place to be?” It was our next essay assignment, meant to conjure up a short piece using current events. We have been learning about the wars in other countries […]

“Get ready, boy!” my step-father, Neil, shouted. “I don’t want to get skunked again.” Getting skunked meant going home empty-handed. As the sun set it became harder to see and the ducks flying into our decoys became shadowy ghosts. Occasionally you’d hear the low thump of wingbeats and a splash as something landed nearby. Neil […]

A young woman fidgeted nervously in the scratchy gray cushion of a waiting room chair. Her eyes darted from her chipped and jagged nails to the metal plate on the veneer wooden door across the way; it read Hugh M. Jennings, M.D., F.A.C.S.  “Janice Woodrow?” A nurse sporting blue scrubs held a clipboard and looked […]

His hands smelled of sun and labour. Since the very first time they held me, they have never been soft. If I had to describe him in just one word, rough would be my best choice. My grandfather had been a farmer almost all his life, except for a brief parentheses when he worked as […]

There was a man I used to call my neighbour. He lived across the hedge where the old desolate mud house now stands in fatigue. He lived with his wife and his children and his cow in the mud house. He was an awe, my neighbour of the mud house, admonished even by the novices […]

Good evening. Thanks for celebrating Seth and Julie’s wedding.  My name is Martin Gold. I am proud to be both the brother and Best Man to Seth. “My speech is going to be like a mini-skirt; it is big enough to cover the essentials and short enough to hold your attention.”  This anonymous quote limits […]

We got our first TV in the late 1950s, and watched everything available. Every night, half an hour before the first program started, we would turn the small, black-and-white TV on, just to make sure that the test image was OK. Five minutes before the hour, the TV clock was shown and we would sit […]

The door bell woke me up. It rang several times. I heard Mother get up, turn the lights on and walk down the stairs. When she opened the door, somebody delivered him. The day before, he had left home dressed up in his Sunday suit, white shirt and tie. He had bathed, shaved, manicured his […]

We had to pretend that we had never seen it before, so when Mother handed us the enormous Christmas present, we tried to look surprised. But we had already discovered the package several weeks before. We had taken it out of mother’s wardrobe, shook it, squeezed it, and fantasized about its content.  We quickly unwrapped […]

We probably all suffered from different kinds of PTSD. Mother had gone through a childhood which included a kind, but weak mother, an alcoholic and abusive father, nine siblings, and extreme poverty. Father and his seven siblings never quite got over the terror they felt for their father, who would punish them brutally. My siblings […]

 Sadly, I was named after my Portuguese Grandma who died long before I was born. I will call her M.  ******* In the early 20th century, M enjoyed an idyllic carefree existence on the picturesque equatorial island of Sao Tome. The only child of thriving coffee plantation owners, her life wanted nothing. Nothing. Cornucopias of […]