8 More Stories

By Triece Bartlett

A follow up to the first book of 8 short stories. Each story will take you to a a different place or world. Some of the stories are grounded in this reality with familiar themes, restaurants, and national parks. Other stories take you to familiar places, but meld into other realms. Some stories just take you completely to an alternate reality and world. There are ghosts and some gore and some beauty. In some stories, life and death hang in the balance. Many of the stories seem to reflect strong independent women. I hope you enjoy 8 flights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9781304565211

Book preview

8 More Stories

By Triece Bartlett

Artwork by Haley Bartlett

2024

978-1-304-56521-1

The Words

In the beginning, there was light.  So many things came after that- before labels began and words.  I try to evoke some kind of visceral emotion with my words, even if sometimes the mind can’t wrap a meaning around them.  I want to thank Haley for being a constant support and often the one person I do not have to explain myself to; the one who will always accept me for who I am, with all my light and all my imperfections etched and broken into the stone over the years. Thank you. Where Are We is my latest venture into a world. I hope you enjoy. Benny and Lou is an old revamped and finished story from many many years ago.  I hoped it would be a more grounding story for those who don’t want to feel too much. I wrote The Captain’s Tale many years ago for a short story contest, but it was too long.  I tried to edit it, but it lost its meaning, so here it is now. The Tan of The Moon is another venture into a world between worlds that was written long long ago, but fleshed out and finished recently.  Freedom’s Just Another Word was actually an idea for a novel from long ago, but not long long ago, and I found the few pages I had written and decided to finish the story as a short.  Hands Across the Sun started as a first line exercise for a short story writing class I took many years ago.  It was a short short, but I fleshed it out and finished it off a little more (Gore and Emotion Trigger Warning on this one!).  Take Off was written a while ago, but was incomplete.  I have finished it for this collection, and it is another flight of fancy.  The Climb is based on fact and fiction and a story I started a few years ago and fleshed out and finished off for this collection.  It is more grounded, in some ways, than most of the other stories.  I hope you enjoy the stories, and the voices and perspectives.

Where Are We?

Benny and Lou

The Captain’s Tale

The Tan of The Moon

Freedom’s Just Another Word

Hands Across The Sun

Take Off

The Climb

Where Are We?

What did we do wrong?  The voice echoed through the empty hallways of the steal skyscraper in the middle of a field of asphalt surrounded by the brightest azure sky. 

No one answered the question.  The white and gray muslin pants and tunic top were dirty and worn.  Her hands were wrinkled and her hair was white and gray, but more brilliant than her tired clothes.  She was athletic and beautiful, but searching too long for answers. 

She had traveled for months from her home by The Ocean to find anyone.  She had been meditating on existence and the catastrophic turns of her planet.  There had been no births for new life for many years.  She was now standing in the one place that was still trying to find the answers to why nothing new had been grown or born or hatched or created.  She had created new paintings by The Ocean.  Her nearest neighbor was inland by 30 miles.  She had walked to her home to bring her some crabs she had caught that were healthy and untainted by The Tragic.  She had old crops of spinach and tomatoes she had traded and shared with others and that she had kept alive.  The potatoes were rare, and she did not share them.  Her neighbor was not there.  Her meditation had lasted only a few days, and her old carrier pigeon had returned with the note from her neighbor saying she would welcome her visit, crab, and spinach.  Sqr (her neighbor) had made some new paints from some leaves from a fall tree to trade.  Her neighbor said she would be home, today. 

She had found the paints on Sqr’s table, but no Sqr.  She walked around for days to the haunts of Sqr, but there were no signs of her.  Nothing.

She communed with very few people since The Tragic.  She had a daughter and a son, but didn’t know where they were now.  She had a job in an office building in a city/suburb.  She had a home and was working hard to retire.  She had divorced her husband years before, and her children were both graduating college in the next year or so. 

She knew about the population issues and the political issues and the sun and the moons and the stars.  She knew how the atmosphere was being poisoned.  She knew how many of the inhabitants of her planet were suffering and how many minds were turning to mush and were behaving irrationally and incoherently, but history had shown her that many of these things could be corrected and life would go on, as it had always gone on.

One day, had driven to the office, and the traffic wasn’t bad.  She even arrived early to her office and was able to look out the large windows of the 166th floor to see something strange in the sky:  a piece of blue hanging roughly amongst the gray/white/brown/orange clouds.  In her youth, she had seen the blue sky, but she had almost forgotten what that was.  A friend or a lover had once told her that there were still places where there was blue above.  The Ocean.  Not everyone had found their way to the office that day.  People were missing.  She called her daughter at school.  Her son was missing.  Many men were missing.  She realized, mostly women had shown up for the office that day.  She had known something was wrong, but she went about her day as if it were a regular day. 

The next day, she drove to her job; there were five other cars on the road.  She could count them.  It wasn’t hard.  Less people had shown up at the office.  They had a meeting.  There had been no news on the monitor the night before.  They turned on the monitor in the meeting, and all that was there was a message:  Due to unforeseen circumstances there will be no more transmissions of any kind.  Nothing new.  Things are disappearing.  The only thing you need to know is that it is ‘Tragic.’  This is only the beginning of ‘The Tragic.’ Stay Calm. Then the power went out.  They all gathered what they could and began the long trek down the stairs from the 166th floor.  On their way down, they met handfuls of other people traveling down the stairs.  It took most of the rest of the day to reach the bottom.  She hugged and said goodbye to her coworkers.  No one was coming into work the next day.  She went to the grocery store and bought up as much as she could.  She drove home on near empty streets. She went to her garden and potted some of her plants and brought them inside.  She called her daughter.  There was still no sign of her son.  Her daughter said that the graduation he was to attend was cancelled.  She saw the message on the monitor, as well.  She was scared and didn’t know what to do.  She had stayed with her boyfriend in her room since her brother had disappeared.  Mom, can you come?  I’m scared. 

Stay there, Sweetie.  Give me a day or two to get a truck and pack up some stuff.  I should be there in a week or so.

But her car would not start the next day.  Her neighbors were already gone.  She walked to the used car lot.  There was a huge container truck that would start.  She drove it back to her house and loaded up as much as she could.  She went to the gas station and filled up on gas, and then started the drive to her son’s and daughter’s college by The Ocean.  There was no one at the station to purchase the gas from, and along the way, there were no cars on the roads, no one in the stores, and fewer and fewer buildings and homes.  As she approached the college, she saw a few people riding horses or in cars being pulled by horses or bulls or cows.  The people did not look at her as she drove by in her huge container truck that she had set up to live out of with a bed, a cooler, food stores, water stores and plants.

She also had her cat, Je.  He was a beautiful Calico, who was very friendly and loving, which was against his nature.  Her dog had disappeared three days into The Tragic.

As she approached the college and her daughter’s dorm room, she was surprised at how close The Ocean was to the campus.  She realized that The Ocean had not been this close before