Assortment 11: Assortment, #11

By D. Reed Whittaker

This is the eleventh collection of short stories. As with the other ten, there is no theme, no shared genre, no fixed format. Most come from contest submittals.. The nice thing about these contests is it gives the writer a chance to venture out of his/her comfort zone. Sometimes, you'll be asked to write all dialogue with no descriptions. Other times, it will be only dialogue without tag lines or beats (who said what, and what were they doing when they said it).

The stories can be short (less than 300 words) or long (up to 5000 words). They can have any theme or prompt – a poem, song lyric, a picture, a comic book cover, anything. The goal is to develop as many writing skills as possible. You never know when you'll need a new approach.

I hope you like these.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intercede LLC
• Release date: Dec 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215581490

D. Reed Whittaker

Retired engineer creating worlds I'd like to live in and people I'd like to know. It's been fun meeting/creating MarieAnne, Steve, Bill, Maggie, Sylvia, Smitty, Linda, Billy, Suzy, Ken, Molly, Dad, John Henry, Melody, Sally, and George. I think you'll like meeting them, too. 

Book preview

Alone

Word Count = 498

Hello, hello. Can anyone hear me? Hello, hello.

Carl, is that you?

No, I’m Sam. Carl lent me his cabin. I’m snowed in. What do I do?

Are you warm, do you have heat?

Yes, heat, lights, and water. And plenty of food, I just can’t get out.

How long have you been stuck?

Three days since the last snowstorm. I’m going crazy.

We only had about 20 inches, it shouldn’t be that bad.

I can’t open the door and the snow covers the windows. It’s like being in a tomb."

Hmmm... the snow must have drifted. Can you open the door?

I can open it, but it’s a big wall of snow. I tried digging out, but there was so much of it.

You’re only about a mile and a half away, I can be there in about two hours. Is there anything you need?

No, except to see the sun. Who are you?

I’m Sheila, Carl and I are friends. We share this CB channel. It can be kinda lonely up here.

Kinda?

Yes, kinda. I’d think a writer would relish the peace and quiet. No interruptions, no distractions.

It’s okay when you can see the sun, walk in the woods. Being stuck in here is depressing. Two hours?

About that. I need to dig out the toboggan to carry the shovels and stuff. It won’t take me long. Can you last for two hours?

I can last for two hours.

Carl has a great tea – hazelnut. Any chance that would be waiting for me?

It is a great tea, isn’t it? You will have as much as you can drink. I might even make you lunch. I expect you’ll be hungry.

Can you cook?

You won’t know until you get here. But yes, I can cook.

Might take less than two hours. I’m tired of my cooking.

It took me forever to get this damned thing working. Damn, I’m glad you were listening.

Fluke. Hey, the sooner I sign off, the sooner I’ll get to you. Bye?

Bye.

Whew, you really were buried. Why didn’t you try the back door?

There’s a back door?

There’s always a back door. Oh, Carl slides the fridge in front of it when he’s not here.

I never thought to look. Here’s your tea.

Any milk?

Sure, just a second. Carl never told me about you.

Nothing to tell.

Hungry?

I could eat. How long?

Not long, just need to warm the bread, maybe five minutes.

Good, let me enlarge the hole and then get out of these things. Smells good, what are we having?

Quiche Lorraine and garlic-rosemary focaccia. Stay with the tea, or would you like coffee?

Stay with the tea, though a little Calvados might be good in some coffee later.

Why don’t you relax. Come to the kitchen and talk to me. I’d like to know more about your ‘nothing to tell’. Calvados in tea might work.

Yes, it might.

Word count = 1500

The Cabin

This is not how I remembered it. The road and path to the front door are gone, overgrown. The forest has reclaimed its links to the outside world. No one comes here anymore. No children laughing. No dogs barking. My happy family is gone. All which remains are dim memories. Memories and a mission. The dogs were the first to go. I am the last.

The dogs didn’t like the old woman. She didn’t like them.

This was once a happy place. More house than cabin. It was green with white trim. It fit in the forest. It had three bedrooms and two baths. Jack had his bedroom, I had mine. The kitchen was warm and inviting. It was an escape from the city. A place where we could be kids and my mother could write. The forest was friendly then, protective. It kept us safe and our parents happy. The old woman changed that.

There was nothing special about the old woman. No cackling laugh, no wart on her nose. Nothing special. She would lurk in the woods, the dogs barking whenever she was around. She would appear, then disappear. She never stopped to talk, never responded to the children’s waves. She would hide in the shadows. I must be careful. Is she as I remembered, or how my mother described her, or as I think she should be?

No one in town knew about her. There were no stories of gingerbread houses and children gone missing, but a child did go missing. It has been some time since we abandoned the cabin. Turned our back on memories too painful to remember. I only know what happened because my mother kept a journal. I was there, but I was young. I was four, Jack was six, almost seven.

Disappeared is a good word. There was never any blood, clothes, bones, or anything to suggest violence. After the second dog disappeared, my father lead a search for the old woman. He found nothing. Only my family had seen the old woman. When the Jack disappeared, villagers joined the search. They combed the forest – no trace. The old woman vanished. They never found where she lived. There was no cave, no hovel, no trace. Mother and I returned to the city. The Dad stayed to look for the Jack.

It was a few weeks later, with first snow. Mother phoned the sheriff. She hadn’t heard from Dad. No calls from the General Store, no letters, nothing. The Sheriff went to the cabin. It was cold inside. There was no father. Another search. Again, nothing.

Years passed. Mom wrote, she put her pain into her books. We never talked about Dad or Jack. Mom destroyed all their pictures. My memory of how they looked faded with time. It has been twenty-five years. Mom died. I found her journal at the bottom of a long-forgotten trunk. The journal brought back the memories. My mother was a good writer. She wrote Gothic-horror and contemporary romance. Horror in the cabin, romance in the city. Her word pictures brought back fond memories and created new ones of a happy time. She told of our life starting at Jack’s birth and ending with the Sheriff’s report. She never wrote horror again.

I inherited her writing genes and my father’s academic skills. Mom’s death was only a few weeks before a massive layoff at the magazine. About that time, Steve and I ended a stalled relationship. It was going nowhere because I didn’t want it to. Mom had paid the taxes on the cabin. Why, I don’t know. She never tried to sell it. There was no caretaker. I wasn’t sure what 25 years would do to an abandoned cabin in the woods, but it was as good a reason to get out of the city as any. Time to start a new life by visiting my old one. The journal spoke of a happier time. A time I wanted to re-visit, to recapture.

I borrowed a friend’s small RV. I didn’t expect to be gone long, just long enough to reconnect. I told any who asked I was going camping. No specific destination, no itinerary. I would let the road take me. I’d be back in a week or two. My friend had no need of the RV, her marriage was on the rocks. I figured I could send out resumes, emails, maybe even write. I had a good laptop and my phone could be a hotspot, if there was no internet. The cabin was a place to start rebuilding my life.

The RV had a small generator. Large enough to provide light and cook small meals. It could power a small space heater if it got cold enough. I would be comfortable; comfortable and safe.

I got to the cabin late. It was dark. I parked at a wide spot in the road. I couldn’t see well enough to drive, find the path to the cabin. Exploration would have to wait until sunrise. The first night, I read myself to sleep. The forest sounds were comforting. I didn’t fear the forest.

Time had not been kind to the cabin. Paint was peeling, shingles were dropping, and the forest was encroaching. The front door would not budge. None of the windows would open. The mud porch door was the only way in. Once inside, the squirrels, mice, and raccoons had taken over. Their sense of proper housekeeping leaves much to be desired. I would not be staying in the cabin. My bedroom evoked no memories. Even the kitchen brought back only a few. The cabin was no longer home. It hadn’t been for 25 years. I had no plans to make it part of my future.

I made lunch with no expectations. I had no plans, no objective. As I ate my sandwich, I read about my last summer of happiness. What closure can there be to a hole 25 years wide and a lifetime deep? There would be no hope of finding Dad and Jack. What did I expect to find? I walked down the road, maybe for five miles. There was nothing but trees, ferns, bushes, and birds. The smells were fresh, as though it had recently rained. The colors were bright, possibly washed by the same rain. It