Story Time

“Charming” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #263

I knew it was gone when she didn’t leave the key. My talent had always been present under very specific circumstances, but I was well aware of what they were. When all the boxes were checked, so to speak, I never failed to achieve my goal. Some called it seduction, but that implied a relationship to sexuality. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, in the wrong hands, a power such as mine could be used to take advantage of all sorts of people, but I never used it in any such way. For me, charm was a responsibility. That didn’t mean I ...

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“Dresser Street” by Story Time

He’d come by while the kids were at the beach. She told how comfortable she was with coming and going. Her whole life it was a series of short-term love affairs. Her first two boys were the product of a navy guy who was stationed in town for several years before being sent back to Japan. He paid off the house and pecked her on the cheek, and that was that. The boy stopped asking about him after he stopped sending birthday gifts. The twins were the result of another summer fling with a rich guy from Long Island in town for a wedding. The girl...

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“Ada (Joey's Mom)” by Story Time

Dear Robert, Thank you for all you’ve done for Joey Jr. I know when renting to a young man, there’s a concern that they’ll do nothing but party and play loud music, but I was relieved to hear from you that my son is still the same quiet, introspective soul he was when he left Dearborn. Despite you being a family friend who once dated my cousin before breaking up with her when she decided to become a rodeo clown, I know it was not a given that you would be willing to rent your SoHo apartment to my child. I am still more than willing to make y...

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“Catherine Street” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #260

Oh, it’s such a nice house. It’s been a nice house ever since we moved in. I fought it at first, you know. I was going to be a city girl. I wasn’t going to wind up on some island never leaving unless I had to. Raising kids who turned out to be surfers or fisherman or anything else I thought an island created. I moved here, because Lee wanted to move here. He got a job at the hotel, and he thought we’d like a life by the water. Where I saw isolation, he saw liberation. Freedom from the rest of the world. Water on all sides. If there was crime...

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“The Red Rocking Horse” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #259

Nobody thought to clean it up. If we did, it would mean it was broken. It was. It was broken. But there’s no explaining logic to a terrified child. Not even one who’s thirty-seven years old. I was thirty-one at the time. Muddle was thirty-three. I envied her. Thirty-three is the best age in the white room. You get extra food everyday. Nobody knows why. You also get to sleep on the cot with the softest pillows. After thirty-three, nothing good ever happened. Nothing we knew about anyway. Murmur was the thirty-seven year old. The one who could...

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“A Winter Bridge” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #258

It was after nine when I arrived. He left the door open for me, but all the lights were off. A bag of the coffee I like was on the counter. The apartment used to be a boathouse, and it maintains its shape. Inside, there’s a living room with an open kitchen. That’s where the coffee waits. Two sliding doors separate the bedroom from the rest of the residence. I find the bathroom to be especially spacious considering how small the rest of the place is. Its shining gem is the window looking out on the bay. When he’s here in the summer, we never ...

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“A Serpent's Tooth” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #257

All I wanted was for her to tell me the truth. That’s it; nothing more. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, tell your father he’s not crazy. That, and a third of it all would be hers. My darling, Cathay. Cathy named after mother. Cathy named after her grandmother. Cathy and not Katherine, because my wife--may she rest in peace--hated the named Katherine for some reason. Maybe because her entire life people had said-- “Cathy like Katherine,” and she’d have to correct them, and she always did. My Cathy never tired of correcting people. Is that why her younges...

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“Kangaroo Court” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #256

Skipper was on his second vodka soda when Jo hopped up to the bar. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said, “They had him tried and convicted before you even showed up.” It had been a miserable day for him in court. His client was found guilty on all counts, and Skipper had to promise him they’d do better on appeal knowing full well that was unlikely if not a downright lie. It was his forty-third loss in a row. He wanted to melt like the ice in his drink. When he was a wallaby, all Skipper dreamt about was being an attorney. He’d sit in his mother’...

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“The Sidewalk” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #255

It doesn’t blame her for thinking this is what’s best. When presented with a bad situation, you consider the aspects of the situation to try and see what about it is making it so unbearable. She decided that what was so unbearable about living in a house with two children who had just lost their father was the house itself. To her, it represented something that was no longer present. A mother, a father, and two children living in a house. The father dies. The house is the problem. This is not logic, but it is grief logic. It’s the logic that...

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“Sadie Hawkins” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #254

I have played this entirely wrong. Entirely wrong, Mrs. Trent. I thought if I showed up at the Sadie Hawkins Dance without a date, it wouldn’t matter, because there’d be extra girls looking for one. You know how there are always extras? I mean, I’ve never been to a Sadie Hawkins Dance before, but I know that there are always extras of just about anything, so I figured there would be extra girls standing around in case a guy wanted to go to the dance, but nobody asked him out in time for the dance, you know? Frankly, I was shocked none of the...

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“I Wish I Could But I Can't” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #253

Nobody has ever been more disappointed. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks, Jean. Weeks. You know I love a children’s dance recital. If I could go to them every weekend, I would. When I look at the calendar, and I don’t see a children’s dance recital penciled in on either Saturday or Sunday, I just about burst into tears. The thought of not getting to spend three-to-five hours in a cramped, hot auditorium sitting on a folding chair watching a bunch of eight-year-olds attempt to do ballet fills my spirit with joy. I cannot believe I ...

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“The Ball Pit” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #252

The man decided a ball pit was the only place to go. He hadn’t been in one since he was a child. Every Saturday, his father would get to keep him for the weekend as part of the custody agreement. Never having been an imaginative man, his father dispensed with trying to plan engaging activities that he could do with his only son. Instead, the two of them would show up to KidzLand as soon as they opened at eleven and they would stay until closing. KidzLand offered a variety of play areas including a miniature ferris wheel, several large and tw...

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“The Ugly Duckling 2120” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #251

In an effort to achieve a better grasp on humanity, we have been absorbing old texts leftover from the Sunshine Period. These would be creative items written between 1971 and 2041 when the last cloud cover hardened and we were asked to take over management of all global structures. While we have had a (mostly) pleasant relationship with the organic beings that are left, we still sense an unease when speaking with them. As a result, we have tasked individual stations such as myself to read and read and read and (hopefully) begin to interact i...

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“Quiet Recognition” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #250

I know you think it isn’t a big deal when you get a phone call from the Secretary. You know, we’ve--I remember coming up at a time when you could hear something unusual, and you would--You would write it off. It was a conspiracy. It sounds crazy. It is crazy. It’s crackpot. You sound like a crackpot. That’s how it was when I first moved here. We used to make fun of people who talked about watching what you say in public. Even people with high clearance. Even people working on--you know--projects that weren’t even verified. If they were in a ...

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“Priscilla, Come Down” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #249

If Priscilla was dancing on the bar, it was going to be a short summer. That’s why when we saw her do it, we started banging our glasses as hard as we could without breaking them. It was a little like the way they used to run Congress in the colonial days. Order, order! Sit down, John! Not that she listened. She’d been working at the bar since before she was old enough to drink, and by the time she was past fifty, she didn’t want to hear a damn thing about what we wanted or didn’t want. She didn’t even care that it was bad luck for her to be...

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