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Talespinning by Susan Gibb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at susangibb.net.
Monthly Archives: June 2011
40/100 aka 180/365
PASSING Word Count: 228 The rooster cracks open the dawn for the crows to fly through. Their gravelly caws like a blunt knife serrating the sky into clouds. The sparrows have fled the nest and I’ve missed their leaving; another … Continue reading
039/100 aka 179/365
FIRE Word Count: 191 Sometimes it is more than I think I can handle and I need to turn down the flames. The dogs who need homes, the children with flies flickering their eyelids, the washed away homes that flow … Continue reading
038/100 aka 178/365
EYE OF THE HORSE Word Count: 367 In the eye of the horse she saw herself as a thin golden princess, a waif wrapped in a butterfly wing dress with rose petal sleeves. In the mirror she herself was a … Continue reading
037/100 aka 177/365
MENSES Word Count: 430 On Wednesday she went to the mall, giving in to her natural instinct to follow the light. She saw a mother with too many children, a bevy of nuns, a flotilla of teenagers with purple-pink hair … Continue reading
036/100 aka 176/365
CHANGE OF HABITS Word Count: 361 He was just an old man who liked children, that’s all. Caught up in the witch hunts of the eighties. “I know you didn’t,” said his wife, Mary, “I know you couldn’t,” and she … Continue reading
035/100 aka 175/365
SCARECROWS AND STRAWMEN Word Count: 539 From the window over the kitchen sink he watched her and his heart sank, settling like a stone skipped over a pond. He felt the surface ripples circling outward to the edges of his … Continue reading
034/100 aka 174/365
LUNA MOTH Word Count: 444 She dreamed of having wings, though that is not unusual her psychiatrist said. “People who have an extraordinary fear, real or at least real to them, tend to dream of escape from the thing or … Continue reading
033/100 aka 173/365
KNOCKOUT Word Count: 444 Two days after she held a pillow over her infant granddaughter’s face as she was sleeping, Edna Waters tied a cement block to her ankle and drowned in the pond behind her house. I agree it … Continue reading
032/100 aka 172/365
CHANGE COMES TO WILLOWBROOK DRIVE Word Count: 487 It is an unusual Tuesday morning in this neighborhood of town. People move along like spiders with their prey. Mrs. Smith is in her nightgown with her shell of jacket for propriety, … Continue reading
031/100 aka 171/365
THE MATTRESS Word Count: 317 It was silly to worry about it, to feel shame. This she told herself again and again before finally deciding that they absolutely had to buy a new mattress set. The problem was not with … Continue reading