The Supper Club
The young friends enjoyed a lavish dinner; then retired to the kitchen to pick at leftovers and laugh about old times. Before they parted, they made a toast to the future and to long and healthy lives. None of them felt the wormhole take them as they ate; none of them remembered the nursing home.
253 Characters
(c) Rob Goldstein 2019
This is an entry for Kat Myrman’s Twittering Tales #144 – 9 July 2019
A Midnight Storm
These dark reflections.
Storm clouds gather on a
midnight tear through
San Francisco.
He wants the storm to last
forever; he wants to be
hidden and faceless: dead
without dying.
(c) Rob Goldstein 2019
162 Characters
This is an entry for Kat Myrman’s Twittering Tales #135 – 7 May 2019
For Willow.
It had golden gears, and a golden brown skin that sold separately.
Trina pulled out her bench and sat with her dolly, Madison.
‘He looks like Father?’ Trina said.
‘Your Father was shinier,’ replied Madison.
“Father twinkled like the moon on a windswept beach.”
Madison cringed and wrinkled her nose.
Trina continued: “Father was on a plane to Hawaii when the hurricanes struck. He went down like a meteor over Cher in Nantucket: poor father.”
“Why Cher in Nantucket?”
“She has the right syllables.”
Trina stood and moved the bench closer to the window.
‘The bot is browner than Father, but I rather like it.”
“Your Father didn’t have abs like that!”
Trina sat Madison on her lap. “How would you know!”
Madison giggled, “That day you left me in the bathroom; I watched
your Father take a bath.”
Trina was shocked and curious “Did you see ‘it’?”
‘What?’
“I guess not.”
“Your Father was hairy; that bot’s not hairy. Your father was old too.”
Trina opened her bag and pulled out a tea set.
Madison looked up in surprise: “Is that an elephant?”
Trina leapt to her feet: “It’s Anjana!” She hugged the elephant’s mighty trunk.
“And you’ve brought mice!
Seven mice dressed like dwarfs gazed up at Trina with quivering noses.
Anjana knelt and the mice scurried onto his back.
The android gazed at them blankly from the window of Saks Fifth Avenue.
“He looks like my Father,” said Trina.
“Where is your Father?” asked Anjana.
“He blew up during the First World War.”
Anjana raised his trunk and flicked a tear from his cheek, “How tragic.”
Madison rolled her eyes, “Some tea, Mr. Elephant?”
*
A week after Trina first spotted the android in the window of Saks Fifth Avenue he was gone.
She stared through her reflection in the window and wondered where he was.
The sky suddenly darkened and the shadow of a little boy stepped into view.
“Did you lose your boy again?” Trina asked.
The shadow boy sat on the sidewalk and sighed, “I lost my Father. He was a fighter pilot behind enemy lines in Atlanta. When Napoleon met his Waterloo; they shot him like a dog.”
Trina nodded sagely, “That’s exactly what happened to my Father.”
Madison scowled and popped a seam.
“Do you think he’ll come back to the window?” The little shadow boy sipped
his tea.
“I think he will.” Trina replied. “Let’s have a cupcake while we wait.
Rob Goldstein 2019
I wrote this for the monthly #writingprompt from D. Wallace Peach
You can join in here: Myths of the Mirror
Trina liked empty cities the best and this is her best memory of New York.
She looked up, the Sun rose, partially eclipsed by a big black Moon.
Trina sat primly on the only bench on Queens Boulevard when she saw the shadow of a little boy skipping rope.
She quickly opened her journal and wrote, ‘In the land of tall thin shadows’
Then she pulled a piece of chalk from her skirts, dropped to her hands and knees, and drew a hopscotch court.
The shadow boy stopped skipping rope and came closer.
Trina stood. “Hello,” she curtsied. “I’m Trina, and you?”
“I am a child of the Universe,” replied the shadow boy.
“I see.” Trina searched the ground for a small stone to use as a marker. “You have a right to be here?”
The shadow boy shook his head, “Maybe yes, maybe no.”
Trina laughed: “Did you lose your boy?”
“I think so. Have you seen him?”
“This is my world. No one comes here, not even shadows.”
“I don’t have a right to be here?”
“Strictly speaking, no.”
Trina found a stone and tossed it onto the court.
“What happens when you vanish?” she asked.
“I don’t exist.” The shadow boy replied.
Trina was appalled. “You stop thinking?”
“I think so.”
“How awful!”
“But I always come back when the little boy goes out to play!”
“Always?”
“Yes.”
Trina reached up and hid the Sun behind her big black moon.
Queens Boulevard went black and the shadow boy was gone.
Trina was sad.
She reached into her skirts and found a torch, then she opened her journal and wrote, ‘They sleep without dreams’
‘In the Land of Tall Thin Shadows’ (c) Rob Goldstein, March 2019
‘Shadow Boy’ (C) Rob Goldstein March 2019
Header Image from pixabay
I wrote this for the March Speculative Fiction prompt on Myths of the Mirror. You can join here: https://mythsofthemirror.com/2019/03/01/march-speculative-fiction-prompt/
