Summer Drabbles

I asked. You responded. Sit back, read, and leave some praise!

The Oldest Ent

by Kaye George

The first sign was a slight twinge of pain at the core of his being. Then he noticed hordes of strange insects crawling up his trunk. He was used to the usual bugs, but these ate voraciously and nonstop.

 High winds came, and drenching, life-giving rain. But the insects kept coming.

 One day he realized that his core was gone, eaten away, nothing left of it. He peered down the length of his body through his glasses. The axe men were here.

 First, the yellow painted X. Then the chainsaws. Finally, he became a stump. They left him his glasses.

Kaye George, Guppy president, two-time Agatha Nominee/
Imogene Duckworthy Mystery series/
EINE KLEINE MURDER, now out!/
DEATH IN THE TIME OF ICE, coming in June from Untreed Reads/

FAT CAT cozy series, writing as Janet Cantrell, coming 2014/
http://kayegeorge.com/

Upon Reflection

by  John R. Clark

The jay thought the shiny thing on the fence post was his. Scolding skreaks battered my ears as I picked up the sadly familiar glasses. The last time I'd seen them, they had been perched on Uncle Jake's nose while I read over the biopsy report. When I finished, I knew what would happen, but not when.

After he'd been absent for three days, I headed to the lower pasture, his favorite part of the family farm, gut roiling because of the missing shotgun.

“Changed my mind, I can't go ugly.”

I smiled sadly and took him home to die.

John Clark, YA and mystery author is a Maine librarian who blogs regularly on the Maine Crime Writer's website.

  

S.H.C.

by Darren Sant

The press did their usual lazy job and simply called it S.H.C. The truth is no one knew where Joel disappeared to. Crazy theories spread through the neighborhood like fleas on a cat. Yes, he'd just been jilted at the altar. Yes, the woodland lodge he called home had been abandoned with the door ajar and Kenny Rogers playing.

But the best that Ford County Sheriff's Department could come up with when they found a just a pair of glasses and some smoking hiking boots? Well it had to be Spontaneous Human Combustion, didn't it?

http://www.darrensant-writer.yolasite.com

Street Justice

By Wayne Zurl

Jamal Willie Walker raped and murdered a six-year-old girl.

We traced him to a tenement in Brownsville.

I kicked in the door and my partner covered the room. As it swung open, Walker grabbed an automatic from the dinette table.

“Two against one,” I said. “No matter what you’re dead.”

“Whoa, Man. No trouble here.”

He raised his hands, still holding the pistol. Light reflected from his eyeglasses.

“Paul,” I said, “Go outside. Make sure those uniforms cover the fire escape. The window’s open.”

“What?”

“Close the door.”

Fifteen seconds later. “You burned that girl with a cigarette. Sayonara, sport.”

Wayne Zurl writes the popular Sam Jenkins crime stories for Mind Wings Audio.

Brother’s Keeper

By Katt Dunsmore

Marty leaned on his shovel, shoved his glasses up on his forehead, and wiped his face with a sweat stained bandana. Looking around, he shoved the bandana into his back pocket and started to dig.

Later, Marty stood waist deep in the hole he’d dug.

“I think this is good enough,” he said, and climbed out of the hole. He stepped over to a nearby tree trunk, took off his glasses, and set them down.

A moment later, a shot rang out. There was a thud.

Marty began to fill in the hole. He hated cleaning up after his brother.

© Copyright 2013 Tonya D Dunsmore. All rights reserved.

Katt Dunsmore is a Native American short story author, and an illustrator. You can find her on facebook and twitter.

Vergence

by Scott Dingley

I got old young.

Inheriting the farm after my folks died, I made my first trip back in years. By the edge of the corn field, I found my grandfather's eyeglasses in the dust.

The lenses dull, spidery.

I wrapped the wire arms around my ears.

Lost focus...

Visions: the man who wore these, bitter and violent; dad hiding out in the corn.

I hid too, ‘til dark. In the mirror, even with the eyeglasses discarded again, the old man stares back.

This happened yesterday. I been here ever since, never getting around to selling the place like I planned.

Scott Dingley is a London-based writer with a few novellas under his belt as well as some short fiction published by A Twist of Noir, Near to the Knuckle and 101 Fiction.