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Story Hour: Do You Believe in Ghosts?
She introduced herself as Elvira. If I closed my eyes tight enough, I could see her. A thin leather cord held the upper half of her black hair back. Her once white pinafore covered an ankle length blue checked dress. I expected black boots on her feet, but they were bare. She slipped in my bedroom window in the early morning hours, tickled me from my feet to my chin, and whispered stories in my ear until the sun threatened to rise. “Who are you talking to?” My boyfriend’s eyes burned through me. We met on a full moon night two weeks before, but like all new couples, we had…
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5th Grade Fiction: Balloon Flight
My mom passed along a bunch of stuff from my childhood. My daughter recently discovered my “School Days” memory book and went through it like a detective on a murder case. She pulled out something I didn’t even know was there, and while it’s not my very first complete story, it is from 5th grade…. (and this is straight up from the paper, unedited). Balloon Flight One day a man was selling some balloons when a little girl named Liza said, “Mister, I would like to buy 3 balloons.” “What color, ma’am?” he asked her. “Um, pink, baby blue, and yellow,” she replied in answer. “Yes, ma’am. That will be $1.00.…
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Story Hour: Momentum
“Slow down, dammit! You’re going to wreck the car!” I still didn’t know why I had let Ronnie drive. He didn’t even have a valid license. Now here I was, sitting beltless in the passenger seat, as he maneuvered his way down a road full of hairpin turns at breakneck speed. “Relax. I know this road.” Maybe he did, but I knew my car. It wasn’t aerodynamically inclined for curves at all. It was simply a box for driving like normal human beings on any given road. “I don’t care, it’s my car. Slow down, now!” Even as the words floated into the empty space between us, I saw it…
