Stories

Sean is a troubled young man. Some of the things he does might be considered to be not all that well thought out. At times all his family and friends, particularly his older friend, Johnny (the narrator of these fragments of Sean's life), can do is to be there for him, and help him to pick up the pieces when things go wrong. Even when, sometimes, Sean himself doesn't even seem to want to pick up the pieces.

As Will laments being the only gay guy he knows in farming, he meets a really hot young man who works at his local abattoir. Recent heartbreak and a cute dog conspire to get the pair of them on the same page.

Seth may be two years younger than his friend, Hayden, but he enjoys talking to him often whenever they get a chance to be alone. However, their friendship on the surface may be hiding some secret benefits for both parties involved. And their friendly conversations over the phone may just be a bit more than Hayden is willing to admit. At least for now.

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Former policeman Dan and art critic Vaughan’s relationship has an unfortunate start, but second time around they find that life has something different in store for them. Amidst interfering family members and lively friends, their relationship develops. But then Dan’s employer, Francis Heyward starts to take an interest. Heyward is seemingly stupendously rich, a giver of notorious parties and the possessor of an enviable art collection. There’s a question of whether a line should be crossed, and whether Heyward can even be trusted at all.

Time has passed since Daniel's mother has died from cancer, he has come to rely on his best friend's Luke and Shelly as his anchor. While he weathered an abusive relationship with an alcoholic father.

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.

"We look at each other for the longest two seconds, a knowing look, communicating something beyond the restraints of speech but to which we are both finely attuned; a common language...which, in its evolution, had turned our signals into pictures so vivid we were terrified of giving anything deeper than superficial away, and so we turn our heads, almost simultaneously, focusing our attention elsewhere."

When Stan's friend offers to be his personal trainer, the offer is too good to refuse. But the experience threatens to transform the pair in ways neither could have predicted.

In the perilous journey toward adulthood, Valentín Gómez hasn't quite found his north. He's not much of a cartographer, but he and his boyfriend are still going to try their luck at map-making. Growing up is hard, isn't it?

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The North Down South is a series of vignettes serving as a sequel to Southward.

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.