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Write about someone who’s trying to accomplish a task that used to be easy but is now made complicated by a pandemic.

Posted in Narrative on Oct 26, 2022

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✍️ 80 stories

The little corner bookshop

Submitted to Contest #84

PART ONE The little corner bookshop was known to everyone in the neighbourhood. There, one could find something for everyone; children and adults. One could find both classics and the latest best sellers on its shelves. The genres were endless: fantasy, romance, children’s books… all tastes were catered for. Alice, the owner, was a lady in her late fifties. Everyone knew and respected her for her kindness and love for books. Alice knew the books from cover to cover, so she always had the best suggestion to every request. Under no circumst...

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The Search

Submitted to Contest #84

He moves across the sand at a snail’s pace. Energy conservation is the key. No one should be in the direct sun at this time of day, but it is the only time they are out – and he is hungry. It’s been three days. He checks his water. Maybe he has enough, if he is careful. If I find water, then I’ll find them. He adjusts his head wrap and scans the horizon. The mountains seem to be only about a mile away, but he knows better. If he turns back now, he can make it to the shelter before he falls from heat stroke – but he will still be hungry. He p...

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Loving Memories and Lamingtons

Submitted to Contest #84

“Eve, you do make an old woman happy,”Eve was sitting next to old Mrs Pecker who was having a steaming hot cup of chamomile tea and some of Eve’s most famous and tasty lamingtons. Mrs Pecker had a hard life. When she was a girl, she did nothing but work. When she was an adult, she did nothing but work. Now she was 87 and nearing the end of her life and all she asked of Eve was to come visit her every day and bring her delicious lamington squares and they would talk over a cup of tea.  Eve did enjoy coming to Mrs Pecker’s every even...

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Remembrance Graveyard 17

Submitted to Contest #84

I buy new flowers every week. They sit on the kitchen work surface, still wrapped up in their plastic and ribbon. I take the little price sticker off, peeling it carefully away from the packaging so it won’t leave behind any gummy residue, and keep the bouquet upright in a glass of water. Waiting. Thirty eight bunches of flowers have already been thrown away. Most weeks I replace them as soon as they start to droop, wanting them to look their best, but if they’re sunflowers then I kept them until they go crisp and brown, shrivelling up unti...

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Leaflets

Submitted to Contest #84

In the end it was later than it was supposed to be, and the summer solstice had slipped past – in itself a grey, gloomy day, with dull drizzle, and below average temperatures, as if it knew, and acquiesced to the anticlimax, and mirrored the melancholy. The days had already started to draw in, and the dawn to come later, and autumn to tinge the air before the last of the restrictions were lifted. But now they had been lifted, and now lockdown was finally over, and the Prime Minister repeated words like irreversible and used words like resurg...

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Smokescreen

Submitted to Contest #84

There are some people who see celebratory events as just that. I see them as a task. A chore. A to do list item, pencilled in between doing some exercise and doing the laundry. During lockdown, I ended up adding things like ‘brush teeth’ just to feel busier, more accomplished. To bring structure to the uncertain number of days stretching out ahead in bewildering vagueness. Hal’s birthday. Last year it was such a piece of cake (cake being the only thing I actually missed about the date). Instead of getting washed and dressed, wondering whe...

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Blue Tape

Submitted to Contest #84

Blue daisies were her favorite. Or Felicia Amelloides were her favorite. They’re the same thing; one name just sounds smarter than the other. Looking at the bright blue duct tape, it reminded Karmen of those specific flowers. Her mother used to plant them on special occasions. Usually that special occasion would be her birthday. Her mother would come into her bedroom and wake her with the best smelling chocolate waffles known to man-kind. Karmen would spot the blue daisies in the corner of the room and smile at the originality. Everything w...

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Living Through Dissonance

Submitted to Contest #84

Dissonance: a lack of harmony or agreement between things It used to be easy, once upon a time. To strike a conversation with a neighbour while waiting for the school bus. To be squished together in the backseat of the bus, talking about anything and everything at all. To walk into school, talk to dozens of people, teachers and students and staff alike. To wish a good afternoon to the bus driver and conductor. To give high-fives to children younger than us while walking to the buses in dispersal. To attend music classes, and learn and laugh....

15 likes 4 comments 4
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She has a fever

Submitted to Contest #84

" I used to be able to forgive you, I can't anymore."That is because yes you can, you just are not applying yourself enough.""No, seriously what do you do at home all day while I am at work?"" I start the day this way every morning. I burn incense and hope for good luck or a good day.""Why do I sense deceit. Are you lying to me right now?""I know that the pandemic has affected you in very strange ways. Maybe you need to see a Dactar."At this point he is trying to get out of bed."After dropping the kids at school what do you do?"" I sit in my...

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Insomnia

Submitted to Contest #84

I’ve always been a bad sleeper. When I’ve hit my REM cycle and am far away in dreamland, things are frickin’ peachy. That’s not the issue. It’s the winding down, drifting off, corralling the cobwebs in the mind that I struggle with. Everything we came to count on in our world was completely thrown off its axis this past year. In the same tradition, my small improvements in learning how to sleep were dropkicked out of a 10-story building; just like what your ex did to your collection of Sheryl Crow CDs. I’ve tried switching positions, which...

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Email: A First-World Pandemic Saga

Submitted to Contest #84

The clock on the kitchen stove reads 11:34. Plenty of time. A voice. “What does your mom do?” “She writes emails. All day.”“She gets paid for that?” I feel my blood pressure rise. It’ll take five or six episodes of Cosmic Kids Yoga to get it back to normal. But then again, all they ever see is me trying to type an email. Telling them, “Give me a minute to write this email!” About fifty times a day. Little do they know, it’s the same email. I don’t write emails. I write email. “I think that’s all she does. D...

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The new normal

Submitted to Contest #84

There was a time when leaving the house was easy. Were you dressed appropriately? Did you have an umbrella in case it rained? Keys and cash? Nothing else needed. My mother had told me about how they never even locked the doors when she was young so you didn’t need keys. Then along came the cheque book. Then the cheque book started to be replaced by cards. Loads of cards. Wallets became a lot bigger then came phones. They started off for just the very rich and were plugged in to cars. Then they were brick sized, then everyone started getting ...

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A Day at Work in the Year 2070: PANDEMIC

Submitted to Contest #84

Susan thought she heard her name being called as she briskly walked down the street. Thick condensation was coming from a gap in her mask that was covering her mouth and nose. It was very cold this Saint Paul Monday morning. Single digits and dropping was what the weather man said. Susan heard her name being called “Susan… wait up!” Susan smiled under mask as it was her best friend Angie who worked at Friends Fidelity Insurance with her. Angie was running in her wolfish looking mukluk boots. No dainty tap, tap, tap of girlish flats was ...

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The New Normal

Submitted to Contest #84

Wake up, sanitize your handsMake your bed , sanitize your handsTake a bath, sanitize the whole bathroomThrow your pajamas in the washer, sanitize your handsMake some breakfast, sanitize your handsSneeze because of the sterile smell in the room, sanitize and dispose the whole paper towel, the milk, the fruits on your table, you’re not sure of the how far did your sneeze travel, so you opt for throwing the whole table contents all except the table since it one thing your late mother gave you on your graduation dayNo more breakfast, you sit on ...

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To Endure Suffering

Submitted to Contest #84

           Zinnia answered the cell phone, only to hear Jan, her supervisor, on the other end. With eyes half shut and an unsteady slump, she breathed slowly.            “The new nurse quit when she realized what wearing the PPE was like. We need you in the ICU.”  Zinnia did not dare go back to bed. She straightened up and opened her eyes fully. “Yes, I’ll be there.”   After dressing in the white nurse’s uniform, Zinnia...

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