Category: 250 words

  • Cross Country Meets

    “Are you feeling okay?”  I asked crouching next to my brother’s bed.  He was having another nightmare and it was the third one he had this week.  The death of our grandfather was really working over his psyche.  Our grandfather was our rock and our heart.  When our father faltered, our grandfather was there.  Our…

  • Champions

    “It doesn’t count if you’re already planning your defeat,” he whispered to me.  He had come out of his chair and to the sideline.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I responded.  “I never plan to lose.”  “Then maybe you should start trying to actually win,” Sam whispered as he backed up to the…

  • Professional Artist

    I worked long and hard on the decorations for the house.  I knew my parents could not afford any this fall with my sister being in the hospital as much as she had been in the last few months.  I knew fall was my mother’s favorite season and had always loved decorating the house.  Construction paper was…

  • Sneaking Out

    I knew my father had been in my room as soon as I opened the door.  His cologne still hung in the air so I knew he had left the room not long before I got home.  He was probably looking for the weed and alcohol I kept hidden in my closet, but I knew he would never find it.   Our…

  • Truths and Lies

    I never wanted my father to find out what I knew about my mother.  Everyone described her as having a heart of gold and my father always told everyone the story about he fell in love with her the night he saw in the library.  They were both grad students at the time and she was working…

  • Motherhood

    I had always wanted to get pregnant.  To be a mother.  I already had names picked out for my future children and a detailed plan of how I would decorate the nursery.  I had a Google Drive and Amazon wish lists set for all the items I wanted to buy to decorate.  And oh the books I would buy!  My book…

  • Big Dreams

    Growing up, I never really thought electricity was necessary.  Probably because most of the time, my parents struggled to pay the bills and we often had ‘campouts’ in the living room where we could use all the blankets and pillows to build forts to sleep in.  I always thought it was all in good fun, but realized later it was more of…

  • The Mistake

    I knew the party was a mistake before we even arrived.  The mistake was the simple fact Jacob was going to be there.  I never knew what Melissa saw in him or that three years later, she had still not gotten over him.  I’m not sure what it was going to take to pull her away from him.  He had cheated…

  • Hopes and Prayers

    “How long have we been awake?”  I wondered as I exited the highway in search for another cup of coffee.  My mother and I were desperately trying to make it home for Christmas.  We had a late start and the holiday traffic held us up.  I was always surprised by the amount of people who…

  • Stepmothers

    “You don’t need to tell me what to do anymore,” I said out loud.  I was rehearsing what to say to my stepmother.  I was never at the top of her list of people she wanted to treat fairly and now that we had just spend the last week mourning and burying my father, I…