FANCY MEETING YOU HERE!

For this month’s invitational blog post, I invited writers to imagine going to a familiar place and being surprised to meet someone they hadn’t seen in a long, long time. The stories I received are posted below.

For next month, here’s the assignment and the challenge: write a Halloween story. Anybody reading this is welcome to submit a story. Send it to me as an email. My email address is jmd@danielpublishing.com. The deadline is October 1, 2012.

As usual, your story must be 99 words long, and it must be a real story. What does that mean? In a real story, something has to happen to somebody. Somebody needs to change. And remember: a story needs conflict.

So when you write your Halloween story, make it scary. Don’t just write about having fun dressing up and eating candy. Surprise us. frighten us! Use your wild imagination and have fun! Believe in magic, and don’t be afraid of the dark.

Now, as promised, here are the stories submitted for this month, on the theme of chance encounters…

FANCY MEETING YOU HERE

COUNTRY SUMMER

by Marie Rose Elias

Fondest memories of childhood are  times at my grandparents’ house “in the country.” 

Grandpa came to Brooklyn before dawn to drive the lot of us out there. The trip was long, and he never drove over thirty miles an hour. Cookouts, the beach, and our cousins awaited.… We endured  watching the sunrise over the woods on Route 27. 

One early morning cars parked were up to the lawn, down the road, and around corners on both sides. Tumbling from the Comet we saw every one of our cousins, aunts, uncles! 

All thirty-seven first cousins together!

HAPPY 50th ANNIVERSARY!  

Let’s party!

 •••

ALGONQUIN PARK

By Denise Dreany

The leaves had turned red in Algonquin Park.  The sky was as blue as I remembered and I could smell the sharp pine.

Along the shore of the lake I saw my father skipping stones.

“Dad,” I asked.  “Why did you leave us?” 

We talked for a long time.

“Who was that with you on the streets of that stark Ontario town?”

The stars came out and time flickered like the northern lights of my childhood.  We sat by a fire and roasted potatoes as we used to.

“Dad,” I asked, “were you happy?”

•••

A VERY SPECIAL DAY

by June Kosier

I was at the church I attended as a little girl. As I was saying a prayer, my father arrived.

“Dad, what are you doing here?  You never went to church except when I received one of the sacraments.”

“Those were very special times and I wanted this day to be one also.”

We talked and then he said goodbye and left.

I woke up to remember that the church is gone, sold by the diocese and torn down to build a grocery supercenter. And Dad had been dead for twenty years.  

Yet, it was a very special day.

•••

RENEWED ACQUAINTENCES

By Jerry Giammatteo

 “I haven’t eaten here since school,” I told my wife, entering the Gray Wolf, near St. John’s University. Actually, I drank more than ate following basketball games and exams.

She walked in with her husband. It had been years. We had been close; not romantically, but she was funny and we made one another laugh. Until we had a falling out. 

 “They let anybody in nowadays,” she said and we laughed.

An after-dinner drink; more laughs. We exchanged email addresses. She turned serious. “What happened,” she asked?

“I don’t remember,” I said.

Staying angry is a waste, isn’t it?