Short Story: High and Lifted Up By Mike Krath

High and Lifted Up

By Mike Krath

It was a windy day.

     The mailman barely made it to the front door. When the door opened, Mrs. Pennington said, "hello", but, before she had a real chance to say "thank you", the mail blew out of the mailman's hands, into the house and the front door slammed in his face. Mrs. Pennington ran to pick up the mail.

     "Oh my," she said.

     Tommy was watching the shutters open and then shut, open and then shut.

     "Mom," he said, "may I go outside?"

     "Be careful," she said. "It's so windy today."

     Tommy crawled down from the window-seat and ran to the door. He opened it with a bang. The wind blew fiercely and snatched the newly recovered mail from Mrs. Pennington's hands and blew it even further into the house.

     "Oh my," she said again. Tommy ran outside and the door slammed shut.

     Outside, yellow, gold, and red leaves were leaping from swaying trees, landing on the roof, jumping off the roof, and then chasing one another down the street in tiny whirlwinds of merriment.

Short story: Old Nothing by Cameron Porsandeh

Old Nothing

By Cameron Porsandeh

"When do you suppose they'll stop?" asked the grey haired man by the window.

     "Oh, sooner or later I suppose," replied the man getting a haircut. It had been sometime since his last one.

     "It's amazing how he's holding up," answered the first man.

     "It's hardly amazing. What choice does he have?" They all considered this.

     "I suppose you're right."

     "Of course I am."

     The barber, who generally avoided conversation, now spoke up.

     "A good client, that man was."

     "What?" answered the man getting the haircut.

     "A good client. Got his hair cut every two weeks. Never complained. Always gave a fair tip."

     No one said anything.

     "Do you suppose he has family?" asked the man by the window.

     "No. He's far too young to have a family," answered the barber.

     "I don't mean children, I mean any sort of family at all."

Short Story: Blind by Ann Fischer

Blind

By Ann Fischer

My husband Christopher was once a financial planner. Even though he couldn't balance our budget, his clients trusted him implicitly and he made them feel secure. In exchange they paid him very well. We had a nice life then, except for the occasional blip on the radar screen of our relationship - nothing that couldn't be solved with a few soft words or a trip to the bedroom. Usually little tiffs about money. My yoga studio was just starting to make a profit, and I had recently decorated it in a lovely minimalist way, in neutral tones with simple prints and accents like straw-colored silk cushions and clay flowerpots. At last, I was in control of my working life and poured my heart and soul into making it succeed.

    When we first met, I fell hard for Christopher right away, although I wouldn't call it love. I'd never been with a man who was prettier than I was, but after a while I got used to it, and it didn't bother me so much. I was recovering from a broken heart and needed something to help me move on. If it wasn't love, it was good enough, and when he asked me to marry him I jumped at the chance, knowing that it might be my last.

Shooting an Elephant By George Orwell

. In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people — the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in

Two Friends By Guy de Maupassant

Besieged Paris was in the throes of famine. Even the sparrows on the roofs and the rats in the sewers were growing scarce. People were eating anything they could get.

As Monsieur Morissot, watchmaker by profession and idler for the nonce, was strolling along the boulevard one bright January morning, his hands in his trousers pockets and stomach empty, he suddenly came face to face with an acquaintance--Monsieur Sauvage, a fishing chum.

Before the war broke out Morissot had been in the habit, every Sunday morning, of setting forth with a bamboo rod in his hand and a tin box on his back. He took the Argenteuil train, got out at Colombes, and walked thence to the Ile Marante. The moment he arrived at this place of his dreams he began fishing, and fished till nightfall.

Guy de Maupassant: The Necklace

She was one of those pretty and charming girls born, as though fate had blundered over her, into a family of artisans. She had no marriage portion, no expectations, no means of getting known, understood, loved, and wedded by a man of wealth and distinction; and she let herself be married off to a little clerk in the Ministry of Education. Her tastes were simple because she had never been able to afford any other, but she was as unhappy as though she had married beneath her; for women have no caste or class, their beauty, grace, and charm serving them for birth or family, their natural delicacy, their instinctive elegance, their nimbleness of wit, are their only mark of rank, and put the slum girl on a level with the highest lady in the land.

     She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury. She suffered from the poorness of her house, from its mean walls, worn chairs, and ugly curtains. All these things, of which other women of her class would not even have been aware, tormented and insulted her. The sight of the little Breton girl who came to do the work in her little house aroused heart-broken regrets and hopeless dreams in her mind. She imagined silent antechambers, heavy with Oriental tapestries, lit by torches in lofty bronze sockets, with two tall footmen in knee-breeches sleeping in large arm-chairs,