Kevin's Corner: Sample Sunday-- "Obsession" in "Mind Slices: A Collection of New and Previously Published Stories"

Sometimes you have to be a little obsessed about your writing. This week I thought I would share with you a small sample of one of the more literary type stories from my MIND SLICES: A Collection of New and Previously Published Stories. If you like what you see of this one, there are fifteen more tales in the book ……

Obsession

She crumpled the paper. The bill went into the back pocket of her torn black jeans as she stared angrily at the house. Mr. Wonderful was occasionally visible through the curtains that twitched in the breeze through the open window. Mark was doing his number in there for the millionth time and the bills still didn’t get paid. Now the power company had decided it was time for them to get paid or the lights and everything would go off.

Midnight to eight at the plant six nights a week, waitressing the seventh and all this too. Lately, all Janet felt was anger toward everyone and everything in sight. Her head pounded. She was so sick of living this way. Her eyes tracked back across the dusty, dead lawn, back toward the paint-peeled house. A piece of broken gutter lay in the half-dead bushes where it had fallen about a month ago. Loose shingles flapped, threatening to escape as their brethren had. There was a plan to fix them, but that hadn’t happened either. The city had even been out yesterday, citing them for one thing, then another. Can’t offend the neighbors in the fancy-pantsy suburbs.

Through the open window, the noise of the clacking computer keys drifted across the yard to her. Why he had to have the computer make a noise like an old style typewriter she didn’t know. He had been wonderful in the beginning. What had been so cute way back when was now annoying. There he sat, in all his beer-belly glory, poking along at yet another story. With only one sale in twenty years of trying, and that one was years ago, you would have thought he’d have figured out the situation. Instead, she was left to be sole provider and parent as he sent his dreams out on paper. The years passed, the stories and projects came back quicker than they went out, but he kept trying. If he had spent half that energy and time getting a job that actually paid money, they could have been rich.

Instead, they were waiting for Lottery Liberation Day…..