Fiction: The Old Dog’s New Trick

Aldo lay in his bed, waiting for one of the staff to remember he was still alive. He was thirsty, and he looked longingly at the carafe of water on the nightstand next to the bed. So near, but Aldo’s aged body would no longer let him move to reach for it.

He stared at the light blue carafe until it became the entire world to him. The carafe rose gently from the nightstand and floated into his waiting hands. He wet his shirt in the process, but Aldo poured some of the cool water down his throat. Then he thought about putting the carafe back, and it moved gently through the air to its original spot.

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Fiction: At Death’s Door

Conor had seen this in a comedy program once, and it had been amusing. Now, it was puzzling.

He had discovered the little lane – a seldom-used back route to town – almost ten years before. It was a pretty and pleasant walk between green fields, and it provided just enough exercise to keep his old body limber and the blood flowing. He took it daily, had a cup or two of tea in town with friends, and then walked the lane back home.

Today, the path had a new feature: a doorway.

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Fiction: Floral Arrangement

It was windy that day in St. James’ Cemetery, and the flowers that were laid with love at the eastern end of the cemetery had been repositioned to decorate other graves. I left my hat in the car so I wouldn’t have to chase after it.

Her stone was taller than it was long, and I used my pocket knife to dig in the painfully well-manicured grass on the windward side. I set the yellow rose, still in its water tube, in the little hole and scraped earth around it with the flat of my blade.

“Think nothing of it,” I said. “It’s just one flower.”

Janet didn’t respond. The dead are like that.

But then, Janet hadn’t spoken to me for almost fifty years.

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Fiction: Setback

Mel had been dithering for an hour, which annoyed him. He had been so decisive when he was younger.

“God, how my kids will complain,” he told Rufus. “And it probably won’t be long before some helpful neighbor comes over or sends a grumbling kid to do it for me.”

He thought a moment longer. Then he snapped his fingers.

“But I’m going to do this whether anyone approves or not.”

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Fiction: Blades Sharpened Wile You Wate

LaVon limped and trudged from his little house to his workshop after lunch. He hadn’t eaten much; it was too hot to care about food. He had made himself drink one glass of water, but even that had been an effort.

“Don’t rightly know why I’m botherin’,” he told himself as he wiped his brow. “Ain’t no one ’round here been needin’ any blades sharpened in a month of Sundays.” He grunted softly. “Folks ’cross the tracks have their own sharpenin’ man.”

But a man went to work; LaVon had been going to one kind of work or another since he was eight years old, and that had been more than six decades ago. Now his work, when he got any, was running a foot-powered grindstone to sharpen dull blades. He couldn’t lift and tote and bend like he had done in his younger days, and this was what was left to him to keep body and soul together.

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