Short Story – Page 3 – Linda Nelson

A Bit of Flash Fiction



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Jogging down the path hardly traveled, I expected an attacker to jump out of the bushes at any minute. I could have brought the dog with me, but then I would have to stop every fifteen feet for him to pee on a tree. A can of mace would have to do.
The attacker never showed their face. Instead, it was a dirty old envelope that stopped me in my tracks. I could have continued on, ignoring it as trash. Instead, I picked it up and noted the address and date it had been mailed. It had a piece of folded paper inside. My curiosity got the better of me and began to read, tears welled in my eyes by the end of the love letter that was dated December 1932.
A photo had been within the fold of the paper of a man in an army uniform. I had seen that face before, I’m sure of it, even though he was much younger then. He was a man I knew that lived in a retirement community not too far away. The woman, I wasn’t so sure about. I wondered what the chances were that she could still be alive today.
I followed up with a search on the internet. One of those paid searches led me right to her. Fate would have it, she lived in the same community, and chances were that they probably didn’t know that either still existed. The only way to find out would be to deliver that letter to the woman the next day.
She hugged me like a rag doll and blessed my little ole heart. I wasn’t sure if the tears I was feeling on my face were from the joy I saw in her eyes, or of her squeezing of my ribs in that bear hug of hers. She thought he had died in the war.
“No, No… he didn’t die,” said I. “He lives on the fourth floor.”
“Joe, on the fourth floor?” she asked. “That can’t be. I saw him yesterday and he told me his name was Howard.”
“His name is not Howard.” I laughed. “I’m sure he was asking you how are’ d you? He’s always had a lisp since I’ve known him.”
“A lisp?” she asked.
“He told me he’s had trouble with his tongue ever since the war. He had been in a prison camp before the war ended.”
She agreed to go with me to visit him. He opened the door with a blank look on his face. I had neglected to tell her that Alzheimer’s had begun to take his memories away from him. He could no longer remember his wife’s name nor his daughter’s.
“Joe, I brought an old friend of yours to visit.”
He smiled and invited us in. Pictures of family decorated his walls, but he no longer knew the names that went with the faces. He still remembered his days in the army. That was probably a memory that would never be taken away from him. The bad ones always are the last to go.
While he shuffled about his little kitchenette making cups of tea, my guest began to study the photos on the wall. She stopped beside the one of him that was taken when he entered the army just before going off to war and drew out the photo she had in her pocket and held it up to compare the two. They were the same.
I don’t know if it was the dress she wore or her hair. Something sparked inside him. “Margaret? Is that you?” The teacup began to shake in his hand.
“Daddy, do you remember her?”
He rushed toward her and pulled her into his arms, as though he were just a young lad once again. I was a forgotten memory. It was the first time I had seen him happy in years. The reunion, eighty-three years overdue.

Image Courtesy of Lone wolf moon
by AbyssWolf666 via creative commons

2014 will go down in history as the year I used to fill my writing well.
Here is to hoping that I can finish some unfinished stories I started writing over the past three years. For starters, I need to finish up my Orgarlan Saga, or at least write the next book in the series, that is, if it is going to be a series instead of just a trilogy. Then there are a couple other stories I began over the years, two of which are half written.
My writing discipline has slipped over the past two years. I used to write a couple of short stories a year. I need to get back into the flash fiction habit.
As you’ve probably noticed, even my blogging has slacked this year.
This is a good time to compile my New Year’s Resolutions.
1. Blog more often.
2. Write short stories when I can’t seem to form more than one sentence for a work in project.
3. Finish the slush-pile stories, even if they are crappy stories. A finished story can find new life during an overhaul edit.
4. Read more books – especially the fantasy, historical, and romances. Nonfiction titles are handy for researching.
5. Remind myself, I’m a writer – so write…
6. Exercise more. I have a new puppy that is waiting for adventures in the great unknown world of walking down the street.
7. Buy chicks to rebuild the pet laying hens. Our flock took a hit this year when some strange monster ran off with a couple of the chickens in the middle of the night leaving a trail of feathers behind.
8. Create items to take to the farmer’s market in the spring. I can sell my books while I’m there too and let the locals know that they have a writer living in their town.
9. Publish more books.
10. Continue to re-edit already published works if I see a missed edit. This is a never-ending process, and I’m grateful when a reader takes the time to point something out to me that I apparently missed.
I do have a couple of beta readers, but if they really enjoy the story, then they seem to miss proofing errors too, when they are sucked into the story.
11. Make all the ROW80 check-ins. I really slacked in this area last year and may have been my biggest contributing factor for feeling the need to refill the well.
And last but not least.
12. Listen to more music. A must when it comes to writing and setting the mood and setting for a story.

My year in review:
I went to my first RWA Conference – NEC. I’m looking forward to going to NEC again in April. This will be my annual conference, even if I can’t really afford to go, this will be my must-do-thing. I learned so much from the workshops I have to do it again.
Deb Dixon happened. That was the workshop my RWA group held that happened the weekend after NEC. I think by the end of that weekend I was on information overload that may have helped contributed to my needing to refill the writing well.
Finished and published next work in progress. But because the story was on the other end of the spectrum I had to publish it under the pseudonym of Lydia Clark. That is all I’m going to tell you. You’ll have to search Amazon for the book; it’s exclusive in the Kindle Select Program where it is going to stay for a while.
In fact, I’m moving all my books to Kindle Select for a while. It appears that Oyster and Scribed are effecting the eBook sales for most of the Smashwords titles. So I might as well take advantage of Amazon’s program, maybe I’ll sell some print copies at the other sites. I think more people are going back to buying print books anyways. It is only a matter of time before the eBook craze ends and reading returns to the print norm. There’s something about being able to hold a real book in one’s hands and you never need to worry about the battery running low.
Do you know how many times I’ve forgotten to recharge either my cell phone or my Kindle?
By the way, I discovered the Kindle app for my cell phone. I don’t need to carry my kindle with me to work anymore. I can just read those same books on my cell phone.

May you have a Howling Good Holiday!