Bruno Lowagie

“Romeo the dog and Julia the cat” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #38

“I wish they’d stop the lock-down here and now,” Julia says.The white cat is sitting high on a balcony, meowing at the neighbors’ dog Romeo.“But why?” the black dog asks from his backyard. “I like the lock-down. I’m having the best time of my life.”“You’re kidding, aren’t you? For years, I’ve managed to tolerate humans,” Julia whines, “but this is just too much. It has to end.”“But we finally get the attention we deserve now that the humans are grounded!”“I can assure you: I don’t need that much attention.”“They walk me multiple times a day;...

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“The Face of Love” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #37

I am face blind. That means that I don’t recognize faces. I see two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and I know these elements make a face, but I don’t know who that face belongs to. Everyone is a stranger to me.As is often the case with strange disorders, there’s a difficult name for my condition; it’s called “prosopagnosia”. You can look that up if you don’t believe me. It’s rare, but it’s a thing. In kindergarten, the teacher said: “Look, there’s your mother!” and I would run to the mother of some other kid because I didn’t recognize my own mo...

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“The rumors about my death were greatly exaggerated” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #37

I had been out of town for a week, and it surprised me to see that people stopped doing whatever it was they were doing when I walked by the first morning after I returned.I don’t consider myself as someone who suffers from paranoia, but it felt as if everyone was staring at me. I looked in the reflecting window of the drug store to see if something was wrong with my hair or my clothes, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, hence I continued my stroll to 'The Old Crocodile' for a drink.The bartender almost fainted when I walked in.“...

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“My revenge” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #37

“The man who killed your father is not the man who went to prison for it.”Jerry ‘The Nose’ Salmone was dying. He had been dying for several weeks now, but these were definitely his last days on this earth. He could feel it in his bones, he told me, and that is why he finally called for me.“What are you saying?” I asked. “Tony ‘The Skin’ Orsini wasn’t responsible for the death of my father?”Tony had been my father’s best friend, but when my father was murdered, he was the prime suspect. He kept saying he was innocent throughout his trial, but...

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“Reflections” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #36

7:30 AM; report from the mirror in the bathroomHe stands in front of me every day, but there's no sign of recognition from his part anymore. He has been like this since a couple of weeks now.I show him as I see him: an unshaven man who has just stumbled out of his bed, but who is still tired —so very tired. He stares at me with eyes that look right through me. It’s clear that he has lost all interest in himself. I wonder why he keeps looking at me; maybe it’s merely out of habit.Every move he makes is done on automatic pilot. He rubs his eye...

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“The man who couldn't keep promises” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #35

“Promise me,” she said. How could I resist those eyes?“I promise!” She was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me in my whole life.“I want to make love to you,” I added.She kissed me. I took that as a yes.“When?” she asked.“When what?” I laughed. “Make love to you? Right now!”“No, when will you keep that promise?”I turned on my back and stared at the ceiling.“It will take time,” I answered.“Just give me a date,” she insisted. “So that I have something I can look forward to.”“It won’t be easy,” I said. “The situation is rather comp...

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“The mind is deceitful above all things” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #35

All the places I know from my youth seem to have gotten smaller now that I revisit them forty years later. When I was a child, I thought my hometown Ypres, Belgium, was a big city, although it counted only a couple of ten thousand souls.Once I was old enough to go to college, I went to Ghent University, also in Belgium. Now that was something else! Ghent had a population of a couple of hundred thousand people with more than 160 different nationalities. A completely new world opened up for me. There were three movie theaters instead of only t...

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“How I trained my human” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #34

“OK, Boomer, you warned me about this, but I think it finally happened. In the last couple of weeks, my human hasn’t left the house for longer than an hour at a time.”“I hate to tell you I told you so, but this was bound to happen given the age of your human when you first got him.”“I know. You said there was a word for it, but I had to look it up in the dictionary. I already forgot what it was.”“It’s called retirement, Benji,” Boomer said. “Once it starts, there’s no way back. You’re stuck with your human. You’ll see him around all day for ...

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“Ouija” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #34

“Tonight at 9 PM, electricity will be shut down in large parts of the country until 9 AM tomorrow. It was a hard decision to make, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We can do this! We shall not allow the Threat to destroy us. We shall overcome. God bless America!”There was only one news anchor left in the studio. It was time for him to say goodbye for the night to the viewers who had been asked time and again to stay at home and remain inside while the Threat was still out there.“This was a rebroadcast of President Newman’s ad...

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“Bad Hair” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #33

My name is Jordan White, but to the world, I am a Murphy. I was born a Murphy, even before I was given a name. No matter what I do: everything that can go wrong in my life, goes wrong in my life.In grocery stores I’m always in the longest cue. I never get a seat in the bus or metro; I always have to stand in the back. Taxis don’t stop for me and I have no success at hitchhiking. Bouncers at clubs hardly ever let me in, claiming the maximum capacity of the venue has been reached. The list of things that work well for normal human beings but n...

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“Death to the Puppet Master” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #32

Dina was done being defenseless. She laughed at Charles’ futile attempts to convince her that he cared for her, that he loved her, that he had always loved her.She didn’t listen to him anymore. The way she saw it, he left her no choice. She had been his puppet and he had been holding the strings. It was time for Dina to cut those strings and set herself free. Sure, there was romance involved when they first met. He had rescued her from an unenviable position. She was in a dark place and she had been praying for someone like him to come ...

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“Conflicting Expectations regarding Episode Thirteen” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #32

Dean looks at his watch. Laura had promised to meet him for coffee at three, but it’s already a quarter past the hour.Some things never change, he thinks; you can always count on Laura being late. He sips his coffee and grimaces. It has gone cold.“Do you want me to replace your cold coffee with a warm cup, love?” a motherly voice asks.Dean wakes up from his daydream and looks right into the eyes of a waitress.She winks at him: “I’m sure the girl you’re waiting for will be here any moment.”“Yes, thank you,” Dean answers. “She’s probably...”He...

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“Death of a Corner Store” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #31

“One Pebble's vitamin, please.”Just like every other day, Hubert puts five cents on the counter at the corner store.“I'm sorry, Hubert,” says Jack, the shop owner. “We're all out of them.”“How is that possible?” Hubert asks. “You know I come here every day to buy my Pebble's vitamin.”“I know,” Jack says, “and I value you as a customer, but I've told you many times before that one day we would run out of them.”“That's true,” Hubert replies, “and each time you told me, I urged you to order a new stock.”“I wish I could,” Jack says, “but Pebble'...

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“Don’t come between a man and his dog” by Bruno Lowagie

Submitted to Contest #31

Wilbur Jennings was still reading his newspaper when Ayla, a German Short-haired Pointer, started barking at him. Wilbur looked up from his paper.“Eleven thirty already?” he said. Checking his watch was a mere formality. Ayla was regular as clockwork. It was time for Wilbur to go outside for garden duty.Every day, on weekdays as well as on weekends, Wilbur took the “shit shovel” from the shed at half past eleven in the morning. Systematically, as if he was pacing distances to find a buried treasure, he covered the complete surface of the law...

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“Out of Breath” by Bruno Lowagie

It’s dark and it rains when I reach the bus stop. My new job is challenging, my new colleagues seem fun to work with, but it’s an understatement when I say that the location of my new work space isn’t ideal. Every day, I’m supposed to commute to an office building that looks like a huge cube made of concrete and glass, dropped next to the highway in authentic seventies style. Its large parking facilities and the proximity of a highway exit were listed as major assets in the job advertisement. Since I don’t own a car —I don’t even have a driv...

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