Laura's Shorts

By Laura Rittenhouse

Laura's Shorts is a random collection of unrelated short stories. Many were prepared in response to prompts or criteria of competitions, all were prepared for the sheer joy of storytelling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laura Rittenhouse
• Release date: Jan 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311101891

Book preview

Laura’s Shorts

a random collection of short stories

Laura Rittenhouse

www.laurarittenhouse.com

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 Laura Rittenhouse

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Table of Contents

Suspicious Move

Karmic Payback

Adrift

Who?

Blood Oath

Storytellers

Deadly Dreams

Left for Dead

Cabin on a Stream

About

Suspicious Move

We’re out of milk for the tea. I’ll just pop down to the shops and get some. Back in a tick. That’s my husband absconding from the scene of an unpleasant task. Something he’d be famous for, if anyone besides me ever witnessed his prowess.

We’re moving next weekend, so today we’re starting to pack. Let me rephrase that; today I’m trying to get my husband to help me start packing. No mean feat. As soon as we woke up, Ralph had a craving for pancakes. He said they would fortify him against the day’s strenuous activities. So I whipped up a batch (using the last of the milk) and watched him slowly cut each piece and slide it gently across his plate to ensure maximum syrup absorption. When he sat back with a sated expression on his face, I whisked the plate out from in front of him and stuffed it into the dishwasher. I rubbed my hands together and said, Do you think we should start with the office or maybe the linen closet? That’s when Ralph decided he needed more tea to keep his energy levels up and sauntered into the kitchen to put the kettle on. By this time, I’d started to become suspicious that I hadn’t been fully successful at infusing the love of my live with my commitment to the theory that packing early avoids packing stress.

That said, it’s hard to argue with the fact that we’re out of milk; we’re out of almost everything – which has been the plan, since we’re moving. But Ralph can’t be expected to drink his tea black, so he’s got a legitimate excuse to walk out. Or so I tell myself as I tape up a carton and stand in front of the linen closet trying to decide whether I should bother changing the sheets one more time or whether we can wallow in our own dirt for another week. What about those heat pads? Should I throw them in a box or is there a chance that one of us will strain our backs while packing?

Anyway, the milk run is much more legitimate than last weekend’s excuse. Last weekend was our house clean-out day. Ralph called it our day of reckoning. Since we’ve been living together, every time I brought something home, he’d warn me that one day there would be a reckoning, when I’d have to admit that my new possession was just a different form of rubbish. That day came a week ago Friday, when I realised that we’d consume a small forest to make enough