Stories

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.

Jemya Hanlon was born on Benteen, a planet settled 500 years earlier from Old Earth. But the lines of communication with the mother world were broken after only 200 years, and the colonists have been on their own ever since. Jem was raised in the cold northern lands of New Australia, the only continent where the settlers have a foothold. The nearby town of Nocksic Bay is a seaport, where the ships sail forth to hunt the great orx, a staple seafood of the settlers. Jem has longed dreamed of going to sea, and now he has his chance. And he is just in time to encounter a new mystery, one that may change the settler’s lives forever!

"My grand-father always used to say that everything that happens to us in life happens for a reason. And when we look back on our lives there are some moments that just seem to stick in our minds forever and I can now see what he meant by that."

For Scott Fraser there was one such moment that he remembers well. It was the time when, as a teenager, he saved the life of a young boy who was about to be swept out to sea.

What he couldn't have prepared himself for, however, was what would happen when that same boy comes back into his life some years later . . .

Evan and Gene run into Snowmageddon. They find safety at a ranch in the mountains. While the snow never stops falling, Evan suddenly becomes ill, and Gene wonders if the rancher is who or what he says he is.

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.

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.

Best friends, Luke and Matt, have been inseparable since primary school and now, after twelve long years of schooling, the end of those school years are finally within sight. All that is left to do is make it through the night of the school formal, before starting their final exams.

So what will the night bring for the boys and their group of friends? What secrets are about to be exposed? How will they, their families and their friends all react to the events that are about to unfold? And what will they discover about themselves . . . about each other . . . and about life?

Being the oldest and growing up in a large family can be hard, especially when you are gay and the family is extremely homophobic. You are constantly being compared to your deceased father. A man whose stature and deeds are always increasing, as time goes by, and are held up as your goals. Anytime you reach those goals, your mother moves the goalpost further away.

You never seem to measure up. You are always being told that you are worthless and will never amount to anything since you cannot measure up to your father. It never mattered that you were a straight "A" student and that you were an athlete.

Jamie, mischievously called Leon by his colleagues, is a mid-twenties police officer in London Enfield who loves his job. Having been unlucky with previous relationships, he is scared about his feelings for a new Special Constable who joins his shift, Mike.

This becomes only one of his problems when an unusual encounter with a suspect leaves him with more questions than answers, putting Jamie into the heart of a secret reaching deep into the UK government and on a path of self discovery.

Owain returns to live in his home town, 20 years after leaving when he was disowned his parents for being gay. He needs to rebuild his life following illness and come to terms with his messy family history. There is much to learn and discover, along the way he meets Colin, a builder who has his own family issues. The two explore how to make a life the way that they want, irrespective of the weight of their family experiences.

The story takes place in Cheshire, UK. The main setting, Netherwich, is my invention based on elements of Crewe and Nantwich. The language uses some regional idiom.