101 Words

She pulled the cigarette from between her cracked lips and blew grey waves of smoke. He hated when she smoked but she could not help it. She craved the burning in her lungs and the nicotine buzz. Suddenly, fingers from behind her wrapped around the wrist that held her cancer stick and ripped it from her finger tips. She cried out as he snubbed it’s glow. “I told you to stop,” his voice was angry but also almost pleading with her. “I told you I can’t,” she whispered in shame. He wrapped his arms around her slim waist. “I’ll help you.”

Peter made Jesus a boat with a special seat to preach from. The next time he gave a lakeside speech, Jesus kept the boat ready for when he wanted to move out onto the lake.

He started to preach.

When the time came, Peter pushed Jesus out in the boat. Half way into a story the chair gave way, toppled, and scuttled the boat.

That’s when he would have turned the waves to sand, but his mother had told him the night before: “Tomorrow, why don’t you keep it simple. No healings. No show.”

So Peter had to fish him out.

She had felt alone a lot in her life, even when she was with friends. Often she felt misunderstood and just listened to them. They barely ever asked her anything or were interested in what she was thinking or her opinion. In a big crowd she felt even more alone than usual. Since her childhood she had this feeling and she hoped every year that it would go away, but until her late 20s it just didn’t. It only dissolved gradually, after she had met him. Then slowly she gained the feeling of being part of something and there was hope.

The tracks were deep in the snow but, oddly, they were in a single line. And they were all left footed, and huge. The trail ringed Jacob’s cabin and seemed to stop at each window. When he woke up that morning he’d first noticed them when he went out to the woodpile to get a load to stoke the fireplace. Hmmm, he thought. What the hell made those? He got in his truck later that day and drove into Lordsville to pick up some groceries. There on the National Enquirer rack he chuckled at the article titled, “One Legged Sasquatch Sighting!”

Friday, today, I’m ready, today I know.

Fridays are for paper planes, the day when every child for streets around folds and throws and hopes to win.

Fold and throw and hope, I always do, but never win, never close.

Failing to be furthest or highest in flight or the cleanest or the most stylish in folds.

For all my work, the lower leagues are home.

Friday, today, will be different.

Folding from dusk till dawn, the most exquisite, the most engineered.

Forward, to the head of the queue.

Folded and ready, then I throw, no hope needed, today I know.