Period Pieces
By SoulFire77
"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true."
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
- 78 reads
Period Piece - § 1
The radio came on at six with a song Alan Merrick had heard a thousand times and could not have named. He let it play. Coffee and the gray slatted...
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- 99 reads
Period Piece - § 2
The work was a game, the same one every day. Alan sat at his console under the long tubes of light with the controller worn smooth in his hands and...
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- 87 reads
Period Piece - § 3
The slip was on his desk when he came back with his coffee, face down on the laminate. His name typed at the top, and a time, and under that the word...
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- 98 reads
Period Piece - § 4
They walked home the way they walked home, her hand in his. He carried the day behind a level face, the missing hour and the folder with the date in...
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- 113 reads
Heel - § 1: The After
Lorraine had the wash on the line by nine, and the dog came out with her and went back in with her, the screen door clapping twice in the still...
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- 256 reads
Heel - § 2: The Removal
The dog was at the screen door before she was up, faced out at the street, and the rag rug under him was cold where it should have been warm with the...
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- 78 reads
Heel - § 3: The Act
Arlene's kitchen was yellow and had been yellow as long as Lorraine had been coming to it, a soft butter color on the walls and a deeper one in the...
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- 87 reads
Heel - § 4: The Noticing
The church supper was over and the men had gone out to the lot to stand around the cars, and the kitchen behind them was close with steam and loud...
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- 43 reads
Heel - § 5: The First Day
They drove out to Hollis Ward's on a Saturday in October with the windows down and Denny up on his knees in the back seat the whole way, too wound up...
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- 46 reads
§tandby - The Light
The lights went at twenty to seven, the same as the night before and the night before that, and Margaret had the candles up before the picture had...
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- 99 reads
§tandby - The Carriage
The gray pressed at the window and did not change. The floor shuddered under his slippers with the weight of the train, and still the gray outside...
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- 27 reads
§tandby - The Stop He Knew
The train went on and he did not count the seats again. He had counted them twice and got two numbers and there was no third number in him to try...
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- 32 reads