Short Stories
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Reprise: Christmas Cat
My friend Lewis has been faithful and regular in his appreciation of what I post here. In particular, he has mentioned more than once his enjoyment of a short story I wrote and posted four years ago on Christmas Eve. I happen to like the story, too, and decided to repost it here. I hope y’all enjoy it. And I hope you’re all enjoying a peaceful season as we ease into Christmas Eve tomorrow. ~ S.K. Orr Christmas Cat The damp leaves muffled all sound as Wynn moved down the slope towards the creek. A crow sitting high in a pine called down into the woods, and the sound reminded…
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Fall Of Every Year: A Hallowe’en Tale
Fall of Every Year: A Hallowe’en Tale Russell came into the kitchen with his shuffling stomp, his heavy boots spilling crumbs of red clay from their deep tread. The linoleum-covered floor sagged beneath his bulk as he crossed to the table, beneath the dust-draped avocado-green ceiling fixture. The cone of 60-watt light it spilled onto the table was as feeble as his mother-in-law’s voice. Wont grits with yore aigs? she asked around a mouthful of blue smoke. He grunted in response to her bobcat voice and the cigarette dangling from her lips. Russell neither drank nor smoked, but he did allow himself a can of worm-dirt tobacco every couple of…
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Straightenings
Straightenings The door was open but the light was already off in the office, and the blinds were drawn. The late August sun, powerful still in its old age, probed with dull yellow fingers at the slats and sides of the blinds. Eric sat with his shoulders forward and down, hands in his lap, his nose almost touching his desk. He looked to be at prayer, but his heart was fractured and inward-aimed. He had no words to offer to anyone or anything who had allowed this. Moments stretched out without Eric’s caring if they would ever add up to another hour, moments punctuated by occasional sounds from the hallway,…
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The Lonely Dinner of Keeving Pogue
Keeving Pogue disconnected the call and typed in a terse note for the service desk. He worked from his home every day, fielding customer service calls for the local satellite tv provider, a job that suited his personality and his physical condition. Keeving glanced at the clock on his computer screen and saw that it was almost dinnertime. He had never called it “lunch,” having been instructed by his late father that only damn Yankees and Californians called the noon meal “lunch,” and that good Arkansans like himself should use the proper word “dinner.” He hoped he wouldn’t get any more calls before time to eat. Keeving received one more…
- Daily Life, Holy Days, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Paintings, Photographs, Prayers, Reflections, Saints, Short Stories
Feast of the Maid
He was feeling low that day, with all the regrets and bad decisions and missed opportunities of a lifetime revolving before him like a carousel, pulling him into that silent despondent cave where he sometimes found himself, with warmth and light and hope far outside, seemingly unreachable. Those moments felt like eternity, and eternity troubled him. The phone rang and he answered it, providing the lengthy greeting that was by now so natural for him to recite, the greeting ending with “How may I help you today?” The voice was female, faint, and warbly. “I need some help.” “I’d be glad to help you, ma’am. Is there something in particular…
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Altruism Uncut
I entered the store and left the city’s noise behind me on the other side of the glass. Born in the last century just six blocks away, I was a child of the concrete, but the shift in the air and in the streets over the decades had caused me to imagine often that I was going to sell the apartment and take Marcie to live in the country. We would shop at farmer’s markets and greet our neighbors by their first names and we would never hear sirens and we would sleep with nothing but screens between us and the trees and flowers outside. I longed to flee the…
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Beasts And Animals
The tent was cool inside, like a sawdust-floored church, and Cooper stepped in under the flap, his skin grateful for the swirling air, his eyes pleased with the lack of harsh light, his lungs receptive to the clean scent of wood fragments and hay and straw and leather and sun-warmed cloth. The grinding chaos of the carnival dropped away, muffled into near silence, even though it was pushed back by mere sheets of striped canvas and the sweet air within. Four children waited in line, their eyes on the carnival worker who was talking to them. A slender figure of sunburned leather, the carny gestured with his arms, describing circles…
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Lower Voices
Lower Voices A Hallowe’en Tale by S.K. Orr There it came again. Soft, but intentional, like a breath exhaled with measured force, or a hand across the painted wood of the clapboards at the back door. She paused at the stove, the spoon motionless in the stew like an oar in calm water, opening her mouth slightly so that she could hear better. Whissss. Her head came around with as much slow and deliberate control as she could manage. Through the window, she could see the early evening woods marching up the hill towards the eastern pasture, and some sort of bird flitting from branch to branch in the bare…
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Raised Voices
Raised Voices The old man walked with care down the slope in the road, picking his way through the slicker ice patches and pushing his boots down with firm movements into the crystalline snow. He stopped at the mailbox and held onto it for a moment, steadying himself before stepping out onto the glassy road which he had to cross to reach the driveway. The dog didn’t tug on the leash, and he was grateful for her restraint, worried as he was that she would pull him down onto the unforgiving ice. He told the dog it was time to go, and they stepped together onto the road and walked…
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Christmas Eve
Keeping Watch — A Christmas Eve Story for Lewis B I can hear the men talking at the fire outside the door, sitting in their circle and making their words in their low, rough tones. The sound of men’s voices usually soothes me, pulls a soft blanket of comfort across me. But tonight the pain is too much within me, and my breathing is a great and difficult labor, and there is no comfort here for me. The old woman has done all for me that she can do. She is sitting over there next to the lamp, where she always sits when her day’s work is done and she…