Hope Linter

“Marilyn's Choice” by Hope Linter

Marilyn sat on the bar stool at her kitchen counter and stared at the two colour samples she needed to choose between. Her apartment’s original nineteen seventies brown cabinets looked scratched and dated. Her eyes burned. She squeezed them shut and held for a few seconds, but they still ached when she opened them. Splashing cold water eased the some of the pressure. The eight by eight-inch color samples she’d gotten from ‘Kitchens For You’ across the bridge in Richmond were too small. No wonder she couldn’t decide.  She held the red...

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“Question 14” by Hope Linter

Jillian chewed the top of her HB2 pencil. She’d changed the answer to question 14 so often on her math exam, that her white rubber eraser wasn’t working, and there was a hole in the B and C circle she’d filled in and erased over and over. She thumbed through the rest of the exam, there were still twelve pages to go, and she only had fourty two minutes left, that meant only three and a half minutes for each question. Why was she so stuck on this one question? Mr. Nelson had all the answers to this grade nine math final.&nb...

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“Lorna's Classroom” by Hope Linter

Submitted to Contest #153

Lorna walked through the hallway of the Demonds Junior High School to her first math class of the day. This year she’d finally scored the classroom with the windows that looked out onto the courtyard where there was a Japanese style garden. Until Al Harcourt had retired, she’d spent the last eight years teaching in the other designated math class room that abutted the school gymnasium and had no windows. Al had constantly complained that he suffered allergies from the garden, but he wouldn’t for the slightest moment entertain ...

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“Healing My Clubfoot” by Hope Linter

Submitted to Contest #152

“John, we have to get you up to the front, as near the front as we can,” I could feel my older sister Macy pulling my hand. My club foot was aching, and I didn’t want to be in this enormous tent that was already teaming with so many bodies. I wiped the sweat from my brow. “If God means for me to be healed, He’ll part this sea of people.” I looked down on Macy’s head of thick almost black hair that was only a little less unrully than when when she was younger. When she was ten and I was six, one day, I’...

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“Sisyphus Back on the Cattle Drive” by Hope Linter

Submitted to Contest #151

Harry woke up wearing dirty long underwear, sleeping in wool blankets and surrounded by a small canvas tarp that came to just a couple feet off his head. His bones and muscles were creaky, and he wanted to close his eyes, except this time he were the Trail Boss, on the big cattle drive from Bandera Texas to the Railhead in Lousiana.  If the job worked out this time, and all that he made weren’t lost afore he made it home, he’d get his family off to the West.  He’d hang on with all fiersest tenacity of the best bull rider....

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“The Intrusion” by Hope Linter

Submitted to Contest #148

Randy hadn’t quite awoken, when he heard the sound of glass breaking. He blinked at the clock, it was just after seven-thirty in the morning. He slammed the pillow over his head and smothered the ill sense it was in his living room. After a late night at the law office, he’d downed a glass of a Scotch whiskey, while mind numbing on Netflix. His mouth was dry and his head was pounding. A gluey residue clamped his dry lips together. He heard loud knocking at his door, and flinched, when he heard Molly his neighbour shoutin...

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“Nominee Shudders” by Hope Linter

Daryl closed his computer and opened it again for the third time. He’d already opened and closed his email at least ten times. Shuddering, he put his head in his hands. His name could not have been among the top ten nominations for the StarLit Science Fiction novel of 2021. He was a high school history teacher, not a novelist.  He felt his knees jackhammering under his desk. He neeeded to do something about this obviously false nomination. He would write a letter to the staff and let them know that a mistak...

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“Dear Susy” by Hope Linter

Dear Susy, I no longer call myself Susy anymore, just Sue, and now I’m fourteen years old. I know that you don’t really like being called Susy. You don’t have a clue why you don’t like it, but I can tell you now it’s overly cutsy. You can hear it, ‘Isn’t Susy so cute’? Doesn’t it make you want to gag? No, probably not. You’re only six. In a few years, you’ll learn how to do ‘the gag’, the eyes rolling back and the ‘you make me sick, I’m going to puke’ expression. Once you learn to do that, no one wi...

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“Sweating it to the Lawyer's” by Hope Linter

Mandy drove as fast as she dared along the curved streets on the outskirts of town with large rolling lawns and majestic homes, past terraced townhomes, and then as she neared the town center, buildings huddled closer together.   She would have liked to have found parking closer to her destination on 355 Clarke Street, but it was pedestrian only, and she spent fifteen minutes looking for parking only to find a spot which was about a fifteen minute walk away.  After her appointment she needed to get back to Mrs. Neil...

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“Photo Trauma” by Hope Linter

Submitted to Contest #144

I was eating an orange. No, I wasn’t eating it yet, I was peeling the orange, in the kitchen of the rented Air B & B, just before lunch, when someone in the family shouted “Family Photo time”. My hands were sticky with orange juice and I didn’t want to abandon the orange. “Can it wait,” I yelled through the screen door. “No, it can’t. Derek and John are going fishing, and Susan had to drive into town to get more groceries,” my wife Cathy yelled back.   “Later, I’m busy,” I said. “Jake, you come out here. ...

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“The Disrupted Professor” by Hope Linter

Roger Beadle shut and locked the door to his office at the University of British Columbia. He looked at his Seiko wrist watch. It was 4 p.m. and he’d just finished his last student appointment, barely getting the sobbing student calmed down and out the door. Now he was not obligated to see any more students. If any came and knocked, he’d ignore them. He sunk into his chair, and closed his eyes. At long last, quiet. If he could get a couple hours of uninterrupted silence before he had to go home, he hoped to...

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“The Violin Sonata” by Hope Linter

Submitted to Contest #141

Max Kwong let his mother straighten his black bow tie, and then he watched her hands flick like a conductor’s at his collar, and finally smooth the black suit over his shoulders.  “Don’t you think you should do more of your finger exercises,” she said, her worry lines creasing above her two fine eyes that reminded him of tiny swallows, always darting and busy.  “Relax, Mom, I’ve got this. I’m technically perfect on my violin. Remember, my teacher Mrs. Lim has been telling you that for the last year.  “Yes, but she...

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“The Princesses and Houdini” by Hope Linter

Submitted to Contest #139

On a Saturday morning after breakfast, Millie was in her room colouring in her Princess Colouring book. Her mom came into her room carrying a big cardboard box which she placed on the rug beside Millie’s bed.   Millie turned in her chair and saw that the box was empty. “Time for some spring cleaning. Millie, I want you to put all your clothes that are too small into this box and we’ll donate them to the Thrift Shop.” Millie pouted. “I don’t want to give away any of my clothes.”  Her mom put her hands on her ...

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“Lillian Waits Up” by Hope Linter

Lillian buttered two slices of bread and spread mayonnaise and mustard on each side, and then she placed sliced turkey and a leaf of lettuce and a thin slice of tomato on one slice and covered it with the other slice. Every few moments, she stopped when she thought she heard the sound of Jason’s steps in the hall way, rattling his key in the door.  She still wanted to make him a sandwich as well when she made her own, but she knew he wouldn’t take it, and it would be left in the fridge when she came home from work the next day.&nbs...

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