Julia Corliss

“LISKA AND THE LIGHT” by Julia Corliss

LIska lingered by the embers of the fire after family story telling ended. The stories had invoked long told remembered images of light. Stories remembered for generations and cherished by the Elders who passed those stories along to the young ones. Liska pondered. She asked herself, so what is light? Why do we miss it so, even now that it has been gone for so very long? No one in her family, not even the family Elder, had ever actually seen any light except fire. Fire was their source of warmth and it enhanced their food by heating it. Afte...

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“ENDURING LOVE” by Julia Corliss

Submitted to Contest #133

Rosa hadn’t expected to inherit the rambling old Victorian house and its contents after her great grandmother Rosina’s passing, since Gran, as she called her, had never spoken of her plans for the house once she was dead. Nevertheless, Rosa did inherit and here she was exploring in the attic. With trembling hands, she lifted the heart-shaped, rosewood box from the drawer where she found it in Gran’s chest which had been moved at some point into the attic. She held the box in her hands and remembered the story she had been told so many years ...

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“A GIFT FROM THE SEA” by Julia Corliss

Alita loved to walk along the shore. As a child, she would run and play with the waves, but with the passing of years that had turned her brown hair white, her gait was slowed but still steady. This shore was where her memories began. She often found small treasures, bits of beauty, tossed up as gifts from the sea. She loved finding bits of glass and stones polished to a high sheen by the tumbling sea, sun-bleached bits of driftwood smooth to the touch, and shells that had once been homes to sea creatures. All such treasures washed onto the ...

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“ME, TEA, AND POETRY” by Julia Corliss

Submitted to Contest #128

Making my morning tea prior to sitting down at my writing desk is a favorite personal ritual. This morning I put the kettle on and while waiting for the water to boil, chose my tea for this morning of musing and writing. I chose peppermint for its power, lemon for its zest, and cherry for its sweetness. I placed the teabags in a small teapot I had purchased over forty years ago at a yard sale and smiled at the memories of those days which always leap into my mind whenever I brew tea in that teapot. The kettle sang, and I poured the boiling w...

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“THE DAY TIME STOPPED: A CHRISTMAS STORY” by Julia Corliss

Submitted to Contest #125

Ashley Burnham awoke on December 24th with her heart aflutter in anticipation of her family’s Christmas Eve celebration planned for that night. She had no premonition that the world as she knew it in the twenty-first century would be in chaos before any Christmas celebrations began. It was a tradition in her family’s church to have Christmas Eve service during the day of Christmas Eve, because most of the congregation’s families celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve in their homes. That morning her family gathered for breakfast and then dr...

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“DIG #235” by Julia Corliss

Submitted to Contest #124

“Seek and ye shall find…” The script in English was cut deep into the wall of the ancient structure recently revealed at Dig #235. The young archaeologist trembled as her brush swept sand from the last word. How long ago had humans lived on this world? This was always a key question in the work of interstellar archaeologists. She had been assigned to this section of the dig to search for clues about the human diaspora as historians had come to call the centuries of humans migrating across the Universe. There was documentation from archaeolog...

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“THE LIFE PROCESSING STAGE” by Julia Corliss

 After I died, I found myself standing on a stage and looking down. I saw a sign off to the side that said, “The Life Processing Stage.” That’s how I knew what stage I was on. I looked down and saw moving like a river the entire cinematic portrayal of my most recent life from birth to death. I couldn’t take it all in. It was too much. Just as that thought crossed my mind, a voice spoke within my mind saying, “Don’t worry. It isn’t expected that you would take it all in at one glance. You have a lot to process. The processing will star...

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“MY THANKSGIVING PLEDGE: Thanksgiving, 2021” by Julia Corliss

Submitted to Contest #120

MY DEAR FELLOW AMERICANS, I was fifty-nine years old when my parents died, and I inherited my grandparents’ photo albums, as well as my parents’ photo albums. I still have them at age seventy-five. Most of the people pictured there are dead now. Every once in a while, I pull out one of the albums and remind myself of all the love and memories packed into them. Photography made it possible to capture frozen moments in time that otherwise might’ve slipped into memory’s shadows. I was one of the lucky ones born into a loving family who wanted...

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“STARLING'S HOUSE BY THE SEA” by Julia Corliss

Submitted to Contest #119

Starling loved the sea. She loved it in all its moods—tranquil, boisterous, angry, storming, soothing. She often walked along the shore looking to see what gifts the sea tossed up for her to find. She lived alone in a small silent house nestled amongst the palm trees that lined the shore in clumps. She found the house on one of her wanderings along the shore. At the time, she hadn’t expected to stay on the island, but then the telegram arrived and her world changed forever. She had no home or family awaiting her return. All were lost in th...

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“A SECOND CHANCE” by Julia Corliss

Submitted to Contest #118

The storm had been fierce. All about trees both large and small lay upon the earth like fallen soldiers on a battlefield. All over the village itself leaves were thick upon the ground. Yet, the stone houses of the villagers were still standing intact. Every edifice of wood was blown to bits. Slowly the villagers emerged from their stone houses to greet the new day that had dawned revealing to them the changes wrought upon their corner of the world. Generations ago the Elders had shared a prophecy about just such a storm that would come one...

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“KENDRIKA'S DESTINY” by Julia Corliss

Submitted to Contest #113

Kendrika ran from the barn, but she was already late for family dream sharing. Another scolding and hard looks from Brother and Father along with Mother’s sad smile and nod greeted her. Breathless, she took her seat saying, “Sorry for being late.” Mother nodded, “How were the horses?”            “Good. I lost track of time.”            Father grumbled, “You missed breakfast and here you are late again. You know dream sha...

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“THE RETURN OF THE RAINS” by Julia Corliss

Submitted to Contest #112

Kalyra was born into a world where rocks and dust were the most prominent features. Her birth was hard, and she was left with a crooked foot that gave her a permanent limp. She was an observant, kind-hearted, artistic child. She spent a great deal of her childhood drawing on the cave walls imagining into reality the world of the Storytellers. From her birth, she rarely saw rain in her world. In fact, her people had adapted to a way of life that was attuned to the scarcity of water. They were a cave people. The underground spring that support...

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“THE HITCHHIKER” by Julia Corliss

Submitted to Contest #110

One morning while driving west on a flat stretch of road outside Abilene, Texas, I saw the stranger with his thumb out long before I stopped and offered him a lift. He thanked me politely while carefully depositing his guitar case in the back seat. He had no other bags except for a backpack that he slipped off and deposited at his feet as he got into the passenger seat. “Where are you headed?” I asked. “West,” he answered. “Me too. “ Looking directly at the guitar case, I continued, “Do you play?” “Some,” he answered and without another wo...

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“FLAMES AND STARS” by Julia Corliss

Submitted to Contest #108

FLAMES AND STARS The winds raged outside whipping trees into a tangled frenzy, throwing dust and debris across roads, and even overturning top heavy vehicles. All the while, refusing to pause anywhere over the landscape of Rosa’s vast valley, the winds relentlessly scoured the land.  Somewhere, someone lit a match to wind-bent dry grass. The winds did what winds do. They picked up the spark and breathed it into flames spinning those flames into monstrous fireballs and then with their mighty power, they flung those flaming fireballs ...

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“REUNION: A TANGLED TAPESTRY OF LIVES” by Julia Corliss

Submitted to Contest #103

Standing in the quaint antique shop, Ruby held an old photograph in her hand stunned by the face looking back at her. It was her face but not her face as she knew it. This face was older and had seen more of life. She clutched the photograph wondering what had propelled her to enter the antique shop. Yes, antiques were her passion. She especially liked looking through antique photographs from the Victorian era. Still grieving over her mother’s death about a year ago, she sought comfort by traveling to pursue her passion for the Vic...

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