The barn

There was a lantern on the barn as I approached from the west. My horse was tired and I needed a hot meal and a bath. The man and his woman were nice enough to provide both. I felt bad when I stole her cameo broach and his shot gun, but I had to survive. I left them tied up in a stall in the barn with some food and water. It may be a week before anyone rescues them, but they should be ok. I have grown weary of this life style but I go on. I dream of a small place of my own like the man and woman have. A small house and a head of cattle, I could graze in the mountains. A red barn, I would love to a have a freshly painted red barn with a lantern hanging from a hook. My husband would come in from milking our cow, kiss me and say that dinner smelled good. These dreams have plagued me for the last three years. I barley sleep any more for fear they will come in the night to destroy me. I can not give up now that I am so close to the end. The end will come when I kill him, the man who stole that dream of the house, barn and husband, the man who shot me and left me bleeding and for dead as I laid next to my dead husband in the rain that night three years ago. I am close to him for I can feel it in my bones. Once he is dead maybe I can sleep again.

The end: Tired and Sore

So Absurd

The whole thing was so absurd that she was not even sure that it was real and not some crazy dream she was having. So, she pinched her self hard, which was going to leave a bruise. She could not believe she was even in this situation at all. Every time she looked around she would just repeat these word----absurd, absurd, absurd. Every night she would go to sleep thinking she would wake up the next morning and everything would be back to normal. But every morning she woke up in the luxurious bed in this palace and pinch herself. She was a normal Midwest girl who some how got entangled in every girls fantasy and she was beginning to think that the absurdity of it all was that no one else seem to think it was absurd. Her parents even supported the whole absurd scheme. Her own parents, well now it seemed they were not truly her parents. Who knew when they took that crazy vacation 26 years ago and her Mom went into labor 2 months early and gave birth to what they thought was a healthy baby girl but in fact was a tiny little boy and that a nation waiting for the birth of the heir of the throne desperately wanted a prince and some patriotic nurse decided to give her country the heir they wanted not they one they actually had, me. Now 26 years later the truth is out and her I am the head of this little European kingdom no one in the Midwest had ever even heard of. It is just to absurd to even contemplate, my life has become a soap opera, so I guess I should just put on this tiara and go out to my ball and dance with the very handsome duke. Absurd!

The Book

The book was thick and black and covered with dust. Its boards were bowed and creaking when I opened it. Little did I realize at the time how opening that book would change my life forever. The dust scattered when I turned the first page and as I began to read the room around me receded. The story was beautiful and sad and I cried. When I looked up from the pages the room was bathed in the glowing light of sunset. I had read for hours and it had felt like minutes. I went downstairs and found something to eat, but my mind kept going back to that sad, beautiful story. I wanted to read it again and again. So that is what I did . I put my untouched meal aside and I picked up the book. I read for days. Not eating, not moving. It was only after they put me here that I realized what I had done. I had eaten my own hand because I could not get up from that book. I am not sure what happened to that book after the mailman found me and they brought me here. I hope it was burned to ashes but I fear that it was not. That book ruined my life, but if I could find it I know that I would read it over and over and over again.

Tall Skim Latte

She ordered the same thing every morning from the coffee shop on the corner of her block and then walked to the train to make the trek to work. Every morning the same routine over and over, but this day would be different because in the middle of her routine a strange thing happened. While waiting in line she was thinking about the article she had read the night before in Time magazine about the likely hood of a single woman over the age of 35 meeting a man and getting married, the statistics were very disheartening. According to the article a women past the age of 35 had a greater chance of being killed by gunfire then in finding love. At 37 she did not need a magazine article telling her the chances of finding a soul mate were bad, she knew that already. She was distracted from her thoughts by the man waiting in line in font of her who was acting a little oddly, she tried not to stare as he sweated profusely under his long trench coat, which was odd as well since it was already eighty degrees and then with a flourish the man stepped up to the counter and pulled a gun from his pocket aiming it at the cashier. Both she and the cashier screamed causing the gunman to lose control and turning toward her he fired his gun and the last thought running through her head was “Damn the article was right!”