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Search Results for: rennie

Engineered

April 6, 2018 3 Comments

Engineered

Growing up, the only things Dad loved were beer and his car, certainly not us.

My condition stopped me drinking, making me less than a man to him. To compensate, he pounded cars into me until I bled oil. I learned all he knew about auto repair: changed tires and rebuilt transmissions, while Mom tired of the beatings and left him. Us.

“Brake lines fixed yet?” He had a business trip. Eight hours on I-40.

I palmed the file. “Good to go.”

If I’d filed them right, they’d fail in the mountain passes.

Too late for Mom. Maybe not for me.

By Ian Rennie

Matrimonial Bonds

March 28, 2018 7 Comments

Matrimonial Bonds

I stare at my bride, remembering that Damerites are honourable, noble, and just a little too literal.

I was besotted with their society, their magic, and especially Princess Sabrina. She loved me, but was promised to another.

When the Unholy Horde invaded, I took my opportunity too eagerly. The Damerites formally and irrevocably agreed to my terms. After the war my reward was given honourably. And much too literally.

The ring sparkles on my bride’s finger. Her perfect skin ends abruptly in a life support bracelet that keeps the amputated limb alive.

I shouldn’t have asked for Sabrina’s hand in marriage.

By Ian Rennie

Happily

June 1, 2017 1 Comment

It didn’t last.

They married at midnight; then he left the fairy tale for affairs of state. She wasted away in the palace; his servants saw a scullery maid, not a princess.

He died in a hunting accident the morning she found herself pregnant. Fever took the baby.

She was married off to an aging baronet who enjoyed the cachet of a pretty former princess. His adult children hated her, calling her “the wicked stepmother.”

The magic faded and never returned.

As she slipped from the story into long, grey life, she wondered how “happily ever after” could end so soon.

By Ian Rennie

Icebreaker

May 23, 2017 2 Comments

Icebreaker

She sipped her martini. “I’m in security.”

“Surveillance systems?”

“Integrity management.”

I grinned. “I assure you I have no integrity at all.”

She laughed. “Companies hire me to confirm their employees are still who they say they are. If a different personality is loaded into someone’s wetware, you have no guarantee who’s behind their eyes.”

I checked my surroundings and my sidearm. The bar was crowded and noisy. Nobody would hear the gunshot; I’d be gone before they noticed the body. “Sounds interesting. So who hired you this time?”

Only then did I see her pistol pointing at me. “You did.”

By Ian Rennie

The Ghosts We Bring

May 16, 2017 8 Comments

The Ghosts We Bring

Parvale wasn’t a haunted house in the traditional sense. No spirit was tethered there, no crime unsolved. Instead it acted as a resonator: manifesting your guilt and sins as shades.

People came there, brought by word of mouth: the penitent, the defiant, the masochistic. Some fled screaming into the night. Few found what they were looking for. None came more than once.

I asked the caretaker, the only person who could stand to stay, what his secret was.

“First, you have to stand before your sins and beg forgiveness,” he said.

“And then?”

He smiled. “Then you have to forgive yourself.”

By Ian Rennie

Hijo de la Sombra

April 20, 2017 7 Comments

Hijo de la Sombra

My father’s mask was black with silver stitching around the eyes. He had worn it for three decades until his coronary.

He had worn it the only night he spent with my mother. The night of his second championship win, when he bested 30 luchadores in a battle royal. He never knew her last name.

He knew me only as a young tecnico, carrying his bags, learning in the ring, learning more than he knew he taught me. The shadow of a shadow.

I was twenty-five when I put on my father’s mask. He never acknowledged me.

But the crowd would.

By Ian Rennie

Writing Contest Issue 25 – Winner

April 3, 2017 3 Comments

Our Father

And the Editors’ Choice Is…

“Our Father” by PJ McCann

Congratulations to PJ.

Featured Stories

The following stories made the short list and have been put into our Featured Stories category. They are listed in no particular order.

  • “Pennies” by Meghashri Dalvi
  • “Stretch of Nowhere” by Parker J. Andrews
  • “Call Waiting” by Ian Rennie
  • “Our Father” by PJ McCann
  • “Heart” by Sally Syson
  • “Take My Heart” by Kieron Walquist
  • “Shop of Hearts” by Susan Gale Wickes
  • “Peter and Louise” by Claire FitzSimmonds
  • “Mouse” by Hannah Froggatt
  • “Midnight’s Promise” by Charlotte Marie
  • “Finding Jesus” by Pamela Lombard
  • “Nightingale” by Pollockseyeball
  • “Play” by Will Remi
  • “Hip Sway” by Jim Byrnes
  • “Throwing Doors” by Ian Rennie
  • “Magnetic Pull” by Don Tassone
  • “Permanent Winter” by Melissa Fu
  • “https://101words.org/blotter-notes/” by Peter Kahn
  • “A Life of Danger” by Phil Mullins
  • “Giant Steps” by Esme Cloud

We are taking a break from the contest to work on some exciting projects.

—Shannon

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