Discontent

By Q. Kelly

This short story collection peeks into the lives (and in one case, the death) of women who are discontented in some way.

Jennifer Johnson: A high school student bonds with one of her former teachers.

Lavernida Mae Cogglesworthy: She is dead and buried, but that doesn’t stop people from finding her name funny.

Her Third Majesty: The third wife of a king seeks solace in food.

Kimmie Mattison: A hiker hurts her back.

Ursula Cullen: A mother has a confession to make five years after her daughter disappeared.

Monica Lee Thomas: The mysterious Miss Natalie Payton is an enigma Monica wants to discover more about.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Q. Kelly
• Release date: Mar 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215925294

Q. Kelly

I live in Washington state, where I am a writer and an editor. I also have a master's degree in deaf education. In my free time, I hike and savor frappuccinos.Fact One: I like corny jokes. If you have any good ones, send them my way!Fact Two: My favorite color is purple, but my writing is gray. Life is not black and white. I often write about issues and characters where there is no "right" answer.Fact Three: I'm weird. I like being weird.Email me at [e-mail]. I'd love to hear from you.Check out my blogs at qkelly.wordpress.com and qkelly.blogspot.com.

Book preview

Discontent

Q. Kelly

© 2022 Smashwords

Table of Contents

This short story collection peeks into the lives (and in one case, the death) of women who are discontented in some way.

Jennifer Johnson: A high school student bonds with one of her former teachers.

Lavernida Mae Cogglesworthy: She is dead and buried, but that doesn’t stop people from finding her name funny.

Her Third Majesty: The third wife of a king seeks solace in food.

Kimmie Mattison: A hiker hurts her back.

Ursula Cullen: A mother has a confession to make five years after her daughter disappeared.

Monica Lee Thomas: The mysterious Miss Natalie Payton is an enigma Monica wants to discover more about.

Other Works by Q. Kelly

Excerpt from Third

Discontent (c) 2022 by Q. Kelly

Jennifer Johnson

When I was in ninth grade, my mother got diagnosed with cancer. Breast cancer, fairly advanced. She wanted to see where she would be buried. We went, my mother, my father, and I.

There it is, my mother said, smiling beatifically at a scraggly green-yellow-brown patch next to another green-yellow-brown patch. My parents had purchased the plots a few years ago, never imagining they would need to use one so soon.

It’s nice, I told her.

It’s grass, my dad said with a grunt.

We stood there for a while and stared. What is there to say, really, when one of you will be dead within the year?

I went with Mom and Dad to their car and told them I wanted to walk home. They left. It was November, chilly but the kind of chilly I like. I returned to the patches of grass and sat. Before I knew it, I was crying. Ugly crying, snotty crying, you know what I mean.

After a while, I got myself together, and I saw Ms. Johnson under a tree halfway across the cemetery. She had been my English teacher the previous year at the middle school. We had not been close. Nothing like that.

She must have seen me crying, but, thankfully, said nothing about it. She did not acknowledge my presence, nor I hers.

*

My mother died the following June. She’d lived seven months post-diagnosis. I did not visit her grave much, maybe once a month at most.

My dad jumped into dating some woman named Callie in New York. They met online.

It was a tough time.

The next time I went to the cemetery, Ms. Johnson was there.

Hey, I said, nodding at her. Who are you visiting?

Lavernida Mae Cogglesworthy, she said.

What, really?

She shrugged and pointed. The name on the gravestone was barely readable: LAVERNIDA MAE COGGLESWORTHY. She’d died ages ago.

Ms. Johnson snickered. What a name!

I laughed, too.

We got to talking. It turned out that she visited the cemetery several times a week.

I need to think, she explained. "I need to