101 Words

Paris, Prince of Troy, vacillates before the three radiant goddesses. Each desires the golden apple ‘for the fairest.’ Each offers a gift. The world’s most beautiful woman. Political power. Wisdom, finesse in warfare.

Three parallel worlds diverge:

1. Aphrodite grants him the loveliest woman, but this starts a war that destroys him and his city.

2. With Hera’s power, he tyrannises half the known world.

3. He chooses Athena for warfare, but while her gifts bring him both power and beauty, wisdom changes him in ways he did not expect.

His rule is peaceful and enlightened, and creates a Golden Age.

If I’m the ghost—always observant, never seen, drifting in corners and along walls while everyone looks through me like glass—then how did your eyes catch on mine the moment I walked through the door? You, the focal point of the party—the center of everyone’s attention.

Yet it was me you chose to stand beside. Me you leaned close to hear amid the clamor. Me who walked you to your car before you drove away for good.

If I am the ghost, why is it you who haunts my dreams and hovers in the corners of my wakeful thoughts?

He traveled across the gleaming dance floor, rolling his hips, thrusting his pelvis, as if he weren’t a little man trying to pick up a giant. On my left, an idiot laughed. My Romeo sidestepped in time to the disco song.

I hoisted him onto my shoulders, surprised by the mass of his tight, lean muscles. I felt his buttocks on my deltoids. I swung him between my legs, never missing a beat. As the speakers screamed ‘Thriller,’ he moonwalked between my legs, feet on snail slime. Slick.

We left for my place. Two misfit pieces, 40 inches apart, holding hands.

When my big brother was 12, my dad sat him down and gave him the talk about the birds and the bees.

“It was awful,” my brother told me later. There was a banana involved. A copy of Hustler. I began to dread it.

A few years later, my dad told me he needed to talk to me alone. I told him, “Later.” He asked again. I said I was too busy. Finally, he cornered me. I sat, my face flushed, fidgeting in my seat.

“Your mother and I are getting a divorce.”

In that moment, all I felt was relief.

The cricket on the hearth wore leopard-print slippers and a pearl-button coat. He chirped brightly for his lady love, whom we thought must be hiding nearby. He sang ever more extravagantly until she chirruped, revealing herself curled in the silver hollow of one of Auntie’s decorative spoons. She wore a gold-threaded chrysanthemum kimono. She hopped down and approached him. They touched antennae delicately. My sisters and I tiptoed away and prepared a wedding feast of lettuce and aphids picked from Auntie’s African violets. The moon rose. The lovers departed. We went to bed, dreaming that love, someday, might find us too.

It’s a good day to die, Nell thought.

At 100, she was tired. Family and friends had passed long ago. From her bed, Nell waited for visits from dead relatives, like she’d seen in movies. None came.

“Ready to go?” Kate, Nell’s long-time nurse, whispered as she entered the room.

It was Walmart Wednesday.

“I ain’t goin’ anywhere today,” Nell sighed.

“Nonsense,” Kate said, smiling gently and lovingly, taking Nell’s hand.

Nell took her last breath.

“I’m glad she passed when she did,” Nell’s doctor told his assistant. “I didn’t want to tell her Kate died in a car accident yesterday.”

She trudged through the rain-soaked valley, cursing herself for ever thinking she could complete a solo hike. She was shivering, her boots caked in mud, her face a minefield of insect bites. But at least she was on the trail again, after having been lost for the better part of the day.

The late afternoon found her climbing out of the ravine. Rain clouds had finally been chased off by the sun, its amber rays transforming the breathtaking landscape around her into a living painting. As she neared the mountain pass, she felt giddy. This was her most rewarding hike yet.