Stories

Prompt #385 –

Brendan Nelson had a tough week at work. He is a Project Manager at a small software company. Nothing went well on his current project. The last delivery to QA (Quality Assurance) was a total failure, the techs couldn't even install it. Add to that, a serious problem in the development of a new feature arose. Finally, on top of that, the customer was screaming about a bug that hadn't been fixed for months, and now it apparently crashed the system. As if things weren't bad at work, he had to come home to a surprise.

Mike finds himself in an unexpected and uncomfortable situation. New school, new town, new family, and most notably, new roommate. And life seems to only get crazier every day.

This is the story Enrique Alberto, just another ordinary guy. But not everything is as ordinary as it seems.

Newly coming to terms with being gay, following an abusive childhood and a failed relationship with a girlfriend, electrician Keith meets Thomas, who runs a local arts charity. Despite coming from vastly differing backgrounds, the two discover much in common, not least the need to come to terms with complex relationships to their fathers. But they also learn to enjoy exploring life together.

I remember my life now as if I'm looking out a window. Streaks of my life flash by me. I try to open the window and catch them, but the window won't open. So, I sit and watch them, and I wonder did they really happen or was it just a dream? Take a journey back in time as 78-year-old Phil Reid relates his life experiences to a younger man.

14-year-old Bryan Padilla is caught between worlds he doesn't feel connected to. Having been abandoned by their birth parents at a young age, Bryan and his younger brother, Caleb, were adopted by a family friend, Diego Padilla, and raised in a culture not of their own. Though it is the only life Caleb has ever known, Bryan inwardly struggles with his feelings about life, death, race and sexuality. Things escalate shortly after the death of his birth mother. Can Bryan come to terms with his situation as a figure from his past tries to upend his entire life?

A real prince marries a man and makes him part of his family.

After a strange anticlimactic kidnapping, Axel Graysen is pulled into the tumultuous world of the Wook Family. Axel treats Jeha Wook’s gunshot wound and ends up treating the oddly large team of brothers who work for Jeha. The problem is that Jeha’s people seem like delinquents, and Jeha is the largest delinquent. Axel worries about keeping the man he likes from getting hurt again.

Can an honourable act redeem a criminal’s past?

Nathan and Brohm are granted a precious gift: their unsavoury pasts are wiped clean, allowing them a chance to restart their lives anew. However, fighting against their old habit of using violence to solve problems proves to be a difficult challenge.

To make matters worse, bloodthirsty creatures are emerging from the dark. Their source—an unexpected visitor known only to Nathan and Brohm—forces them to deal with the threat covertly. But the solution is dire, and both are hesitant to carry out such a profound sacrifice.

A response to Prompt #68:

Imagine where your character leads a pretty decent single life. Then there is a phone call and that life is turned upside down as they find out, they have just become a parent—to a teenager. Is this a cousin that has been left with no other family members? A god child? A niece or nephew? What is this first meeting between them going to be like?

The circumstances whereby Manny obtains guardianship are a little strange, to say the least. Not to mention what happens afterward.