Category Archives: Fiction Friday

After a long hiatus from participating in Fiction Fridays, I’ve decided to start playing again. I didn’t quit for any reason in particular; just been busy and a lot of the topics really didn’t interest me. At any rate, this week’s Fiction Friday challenge is to include the phrase “I knew it was a mistake the moment it was over.” somewhere in the story. And this is what I came up with!

This week’s Fiction Friday assignment was to “Pick a book of fiction you’d never read (e.g., if you read sci-fi, pick a romance). Open to a random page and read the last couple paragraphs of the page. DO NOT TURN THE PAGE. Now continue writing the story. Feel free to change the genre as you write. “
The story I have chosen is Zeke and Ned by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, a small, yellowed paperback I found in a dust-covered old metal desk at my previous place of employ when we took over another warehouse and used it for our new offices. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for nearly a decade now – I’ve never even opened it.
I find myself opening this musty old book for the first time, to page 277, to which I find:

“Turn left up here”
“At the big Oak?”
“Yeah, that’s it” she said with that youthful exuberance that drew him to her “can’t wait to show you the place.”
“Can’t wait to see it, honey.”
She looked at him lovingly as he navigated the turn. His chiseled features were what had attracted him to her all those years ago. And they never failed to turn her on.
Long Street was lined with meticulously maintained Cape Cods with exceptionally well manicured lawns- the kind that often graced the covers of lawn and garden magazines. Most of them occupied by those who could ill afford their lavishness, living well beyond their means. Those houses, while nice on the outside with nice cars in their driveways, had very little in the way of furnishings inside.
“It’s that one right” she said as they rounded the turn in the road, revealing her childhood home “… there.”
Pulling the car to a stop, he looked at her, confused.
“What the hell” she exclaimed.
The lawn looked as if it hadn’t been maintained in years. The house itself a spectacle in neglect: cracked, peeling paint, broken windows, a piece of soffit dangling from the eave, suspended by one pathetic nail. A sign hanging on the picket fence read

“There, that should just about do it” he whispered under his breath as he worked placing the last piece of fresh cut sod on Martha Tinney’s grave. She had died a miserable old woman: no children of her own, widowed thirty years, and living off of Social Security tending to twenty-seven cats. Giving the earth a final pat down, he looked up at the headstone

Martha Tinney

1923 – 2007

Old bitch, ain’t ya?

“Evenin’, Joe!”

You can blame Benjamin Solah for this one.
I visited his blog today – as I do every day – and discovered this cool little thing called Fiction Friday. Curiosity getting the best of me as it always does, I decided to give it a try. Enjoy!

“This calls for blood! The Lord calls for sacrifice!” the old, deranged preacher yelled from his makeshift pulpit. “Johnny Rengle’s death …”