Unfinished Business

I returned from the dead, a list in my pocket: wrongs to right, pleasures to reclaim, truths to confess, sins to own. Mostly I needed to know how the world had fared without me. Apart from my poor mother, a grieving ghost of her former self, it was as if I’d never lived. Never loved. Never mattered. A stranger slept in my bed, alongside my darling wife, in my home, the one I’d slaved to pay for, my manicured garden now wildly overgrown. I fed the list to the fire. I’d start over from the very beginning, wherever that was.

From Guest Contributor Elizabeth Murphy

Slab Of Butter

James had few true pleasures remaining in his life. Time, divorce, and the company had taken most everything. His doctor seemed intent on taking what remained.

"You're going to have to cut out alcohol and fatty foods."

James stared down at his bowl of greens. Across the table, George was cutting into his steak. Steven, keeping it light, had a baked potato topped with sour cream, chives, and bacon. They both drank from judicious glasses of red wine.

"Can you pass me that plate?"

Ignoring the stares from his friends, James smeared a large slab of butter onto his salad.

Waiting

Everyone but Hampton looked down, eyes locked on tiny screens. Hampton’s expensive artisans of optimistic speculation could no longer sustain nervous conversation.

Hampton mindfully sipped tepid coffee. Ignoring his stomach breakdancing to the beat of butterflies, he savored a donut. He wanted to remember such simple pleasures.

Anticipation clung to them like static ready to spark and ignite...would it be fireworks or a bomb? A knock on the door shattered their reticent silence. A bailiff opened the door.

“The verdict is in. Court resumes in five minutes.”

Certain of nothing but his surreal limbo ending, Hampton stood, then vomited.

From Guest Contributor JD Clapp

Berries

An unpleasant task of my youth was picking raspberries in our backyard. Raspberries are the least tasty of Oregon’s big three, the others being blackberries and strawberries. Raspberries are also soft, easily squashed and have unpleasant texture. At times I imagined cutting the roots as a way to avoid picking them. Blackberries and marionberries (a kind of blackberry) are pleasures that can be picked while standing up and grow wild, so one need not grow them yourself or pay for u-pick. Oregon strawberries are the best tasting strawberries, but they must be bought or paid for by back breaking u-pick.

From Guest Contributor Doug Hawley