Short Story Workbook

Susan Roberts

She came to be at 25, at least that's when she noticed she was. It happened all of a sudden when somebody looked at her. She was sitting in a bus, cold and damp from the rain, and he sat beside her and she saw his stare. His pupils, intense and drilling, became a mirror and suddenly she came to realize her own being.

He who stared and sat beside her, a crumpled person in shades of brown and gray, became, consequently, the second person she noticed. Looking right back at him, she noticed a message written on his hand. It was smudged in black ink but she could see that it said 'be enthused' and being as she was, now present and actual, she felt inclined to inquire. He raised his blanched eyebrows and looked up, looked down, looked back at her, licked the sleeve of his jumper and scrubbed at the writing until his hand turned pinkish gray. Then he smiled, a long streak of vibrance on his otherwise barren head. He asked her name and told her he liked going to the theater. And that it was his birthday. He looked older than 27. She felt newer than 25.

Jess C Scott

“Shall we go?” he said after a while. I must have been staring. I must have looked dazed. I might have been drooling. I wouldn’t have known.

Christian was “cool” in high school: a little blasé, a little aloof. But now he was cool...in a mind-blowing kind of way. I heard a silent scream from him: I know you want me. You’ll deny it, but I can wait. Shall we get it on?

Suddenly, I picked up on his cologne. Spicy, exotic. I thought of my ruffled leopard thong.

“So,” I managed to say when I got back my tongue, “how was your day?”

Alexander Frasse

My chest tightened at the sight of it. Hal’s Sex Emporium, screaming its presence over the morose gray cityscape. I looked down at the young brown-haired boy to my side, hopping across the pavement trying not to step on any cracks. I watched the glow of polychromatic dildos in the pink tinted window grow nearer and nearer. A lime green anthropomorphic condom, smiling and giving a thumbs-up, got larger with every step. We hadn’t taken that road home before. I thought that a detour might be a nice chance to see the rest of the city. What was I thinking, introducing a mere child to the despicable corruption of this metropolis? The brown-haired boy jumped over a fault in the sidewalk as he sang.

Alexander Frasse

The first time I heard Tchaikovsky’s “1812: Overture” was as a six-foot f**king rat. July fourth of ’96, good old Pyotr blaring from the public speakers as the merry-go-round operator sits stage left smoking a joint and two teenagers are apprehended for throwing sodas at the go-karters. This is where the magic lives, begin the cacophony. Right about the time Prince Charming is pinching the ass of some lucky 14-year-old, I’m staring through my cellophane eyes into a camera, watching my reflection hold the shoulders of a blank-faced little girl. Start with the overture, can you hear the strings?

“Smile!” says the fat man with the camera standing center-stage. The trophy wife beside him rolls her eyes.

“Stop shaking it Vernan, you’ll ruin the picture,” she says.

Alexander Frasse

“We did it,” she says. We tear down the highway in a shoddy station wagon. I look in the reflection of the rear view mirror. Behind the pile of red canisters in the back, I see the flashes of light getting brighter. The blaring wail of sirens growing louder.

“This was for all the unborn children of God, murdered in the name of science.” She says.

On the horizon behind us, a billowing cloud of black smoke erupts from a wave of orange flames.
“Darwin, that ignorant f**k.” She rants through yellow teeth, stained with red lipstick, “Rat-Atheist bastard! What the hell did he know?”

The car is filled with noxious fumes. I roll down the window to stop the stinging in my eyes. Pure gasoline.

Alexander Frasse

I pulled up along the corroded sidewalk of that single story Lustron to see Phyllis already pulling some boxes from the garage out into the drive. It was a pleasant day and as I exited my car Phyllis put down a rusted tin of Newsweek’s she was carrying to greet me.

“Arnold! How have you been?” Phyllis asked. She surprised me with a hug and wrapped herself around my torso. A cold wind shot a ripple of sensation down my spine.

“It’s good to see you too Phillip.”

Jess C Scott

"Angie, relax." Shanti looked in Angie’s direction. "You don’t need to overdo it."

Angie simply laughed.

The yoga instructor shook her head. “No one would guess what you really do for a living.”

“What I’ve done, you mean,” said Angie.

“Oh? You’re retiring? Remember to exhale…slow, deep breaths. Release the tension from your body.”

C. Soshal

It was a cold night in the city and Stan sat at the bar. His best friends Bill and Steve shuffled in, as Stan sat in his stool turning towards them. They looked around the bar and strolled up to the only empty chairs on either side of Stan.

“Hey Standard--happy birthday.” Steve bellowed over the crowd.

Stan never knew where he came up with that nickname, Standard. He didn’t mind it though, it made him feel accepted.

“You ready for a good night?” asked Bill.

3rdhawkins

My name is Nikki not Nicole but Nikki Jamison. My friends and everyone knows me by Suzuki. Like the bike but better. I got the name because my mother is half Japanese and I got them chinky sexy eyes. Besides I love motorcycles. I am going to get me one, one day. My father is a black and half a pimp, dead beat dad. I live here in Baltimore Maryland. “The home of the Wire” as they say. My mother and father were like a lot of other young parents; all they chose to do when they was young was party and not be responsible for the child they had. So when I was six weeks old my father left us and decided to move out of Baltimore. My mother started using drugs and eventually gave me away to my aunt. One night late I woke up in the middle of the night and my aunt told my mother to just give up and leave me with her, because she wasn’t giving me the care I needed. My mother told my aunt.

“No, this is my child and I’m taking good care of Nikki” she said.