Break From Reality. Daily.
Ricky woke to the sound of his brother, Clint, trying to clear rubble from the stairs. All night long the sound of chains dragging across the floor filled the basement. They had found a battery-powered lantern to light the room, but it was getting dim.
The basement always had a musty smell, but the reek of decay now hung in the air.
“Get away from there,” said Ricky. “Something could collapse on you.”
“I’m just trying to get out of here,” said Clint.
Fred lays back in his favourite recliner two weeks after heart surgery. A cooking show is on the television and his mouth waters as the chef digs into a burger. The juices drip down the chef’s chin as he chews on the beefy goodness.
The clatter of his wife’s cooking comes from the kitchen next to the lounge. Fred’s pulled out of his dream state as a sulfury stench comes wafting into the lounge. “Fwah, what the hell’s that?”
“Your dinner. You’ll love it,” says Ivy as she stirs the cabbage on the stove.
This story is by Steven C Cochran and was part of our 2023 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here. Dustin stood on the rocky shore, waiting for the island to appear. The woman at the herbal medicine shop said to seek out the place where two narrow streams met and ran into…
