Flash 500 by Nicole Pyles, Carrie K Sorensen (children's books read aloud .txt) 📕

Communication in 2011 and works in marketing. When she's not daydreaming about the California sunshine she grew up on, she's writing about fantasy, horror, and science fiction (and sometimes all three at once). She's currently editing a fantasy novel she started when she was 15 (and just finished just l Most of her editing work is done on her smartphone during her bus ride home. You can visit her blog World of My Imagination or find her on Google Plus.

 

 

 

 

Picassa's Bridge by Carrie K. Sorensen

 

The small fire at our feet crackled. My brother poked at it with a metal spike he had found buried in the dirt. He said it was better to use the spike than another piece of wood that would be better to burn. I knew he just liked to hold its weight in his hand while he played with the flames.

 

"Can you get my book for me, Mason?" He poked the fire again before climbing into the girders of the bridge where we kept our favorite things. The climb was too difficult for a short girl like me, but my brother's long limbs made it easily.

 

I slipped a dirty, wrinkled piece of paper from my pocket and smoothed it over my lap. It was a black and white picture I tore from a brochure showing the two stars of some old movie playing at the historic theater downtown. I loved the sharp lines of his black suit, how her necklace seemed an extension of the gems adorning her pale gown. They looked happy, like they didn't have to worry about a thing.

 

I liked to stare at the picture and pretend they were our family, that there had once been parity

between them and my brother and me.

 

A scraping noise from above had me quickly folding the picture and putting it away. Mason did not like my daydreams.

 

"Here you go, Picassa." I stuck out my tongue as I took my sketchbook. My name was really Amy, but he liked to call me Picassa because it was the girl form of Picasso. Mason thought it should be my artist name. I told him I liked Amy Winkle just fine.

 

I took the broken crayons Mason swiped for me from the kids menus in restaurants and began my nightly drawings. The sale of my sketches earned us pennies here, a dollar or two there. Tonight we had earned enough to get a few ham sandwiches from the convenience store on the corner, the one where they didn't always kick us out at first sight.

 

I worked for a few hours while Mason pounded the spike into the dirt a few times. "It's a good thing we have you, Picassa," he murmured, glancing at my latest sketch. "One day I'll get you something real to draw with and on. One day, people will pay a lot more for your stuff than a few pennies."

 

I smiled at Mason in thanks, knowing he meant it, trusting his promise. If it wasn't for Mason, we wouldn't be here, together. The bridge wasn't much of a place to live, but it was a home because we shared it.

 

"I think it's time to sleep now," Mason suggested, easing the notebook out of my hands. I didn't resist, realizing I'd already fallen asleep over my sketches. He moved quickly, putting my book back in place, then sitting down beside me, his arms around my shoulders as the fire cracked a lullaby.

 

 

About Carrie K. Sorensen

 

I am the mommy of two fantastic little boys, three boxers and one mutt. My husband and my story is truly a fairy tale of modern origins. I attended Arizona State University for a B.A. but am lucky enough to be a stay at home mother to my amazing brood.

 

I write in whatever free time I can steal for myself, mostly fantasy or paranormal. I have lived in the country, the city and the suburbs, and I definitely prefer the suburbs. Still, the forest is what inspires me most, with velvet shadows, hidden nooks and possible fairy circles around the next corner.

 

http://chasingrevery.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

Sam and Janet Evening by Randy Lindsay

 

What I present to you is the dialogue from Sam and Janet Evening.

 

"Oh, darling." Janet batted her eyes. "Isn't that a delightful buffet table?"

 

"I suppose it might be," Sam responded coolly. "If a person was into such things."

 

"Don't be that way. This is a party. And you know what that means?"

 

"It means Harold Smithers will boast about the record-setting sales for his abysmal home furnishing stores. What a colossal bore."

 

"You silly boy. A party means – Free Food!!!"

 

"There is that as well. With any luck someone will have spiked the punch. That should bring a little parity to the participants. The inebriated and the incompetent will be able to hold conversations on even terms at last."

 

"Pshaw." Janet waved away the comment. "Be a dear and fetch me a platter full of those ham and cheese h'ordeuvres. They look simply ravishing."

 

"Do you think that is wise?" Sam gave her a sideways glance.

 

"No, but I simply must have them."

 

Sam sighed and made his way to the buffet table, muttering under his breath. "I do hope that the girders are up to the task of supporting both my wife and her appetite."

 

 

About Randy Lindsay

 

Randy is a native of Arizona. In his spare time he likes to play games with his children, fish, and conduct family history research. His stories have been published in Gentle Strength Quarterly, The City of the Gods: Mythic Tales, and Penumbra. Two more have been purchased for publication this year; one for the second City of the Gods anthology and the other for the Once Upon An Apocalypse anthology by Chaosium.

 

http://randylindsay.blogspot.com/

Week of 4/25/2012

Week of 4/25/2012

 

Photo courtesy of Newcastle Wedding Photographer

 

 

Words Required

 

Steering Wheel

 

Corner

 

CD

 

Video

 

Diving Board

 

 

 

 

Rough Tides by Carrie K. Sorensen

 

No one parked straight in the concrete lot. It rarely mattered since no one else came to this beach. People thought it was too rocky and the tides were too rough. There were softer sands and more predictable water a few miles down the highway.

 

For us, it was perfect. Laughter filled the sky with our arrival, startling gulls away, but only for a moment. They knew we brought food and that we often got caught up in a game of ball or some sort of chase, giving them ample opportunity to snack on a few sandwiches.

 

There were ten of us today. The girls grabbed bags of towels, the baskets of food and the CD player while boys struggled with beach chairs. I watched Connor from the corner of my eye as he approached Leslie. Everyone knew he was going to propose to her today out in the water. It added an extra energy we needed to keep up the joy.

 

This would be our last trip to the beach, at least like this. It would be the last time Travis braved the sawgrass to grab the flotation donut off the old, faded safety sign and pretend it was a steering wheel. It would be the last time Rachel snatched it from him and tossed it Frisbee-style to Tammy who would somehow squeeze her skinny frame into it and wear it like a belt until two or three of the guys wrestled it off her.

 

The food was spread out, but it would be ignored for the most part. Jess and her boyfriend Sam manhandled a blown up mattress from the back of her SUV and they threw it out of the water. It was immediately pushed out and person after person fell with a laughing scream while they tried to use it as a diving board.

 

I walked the beach, a bubble separating me from the laughter and fun. There, Sam was grabbing a sandwich, dripping salty water over the rest of the food. Connor was proposing to Leslie who started crying, nodding furiously in answer. Analeigh nudged Jess as they watched the two kiss from the bobbing mattress. Others played football in their canvas shoes. Alice called to me for a game of volleyball.

 

I was leaving for Princeton tomorrow. It was a few hundred miles north off the same ocean, yet it might as well be halfway around the world. I would lose my friends just the same. Tammy was certain we'd stay close with the Internet, but I knew better. Up until now we had shared everything. Once we left this beach, our lives would start to diverge.

 

I think only Garret felt the same way I did. This was the first time he brought his camcorder. I would ask him for a copy of the video before we left.

 

Alice called again and I smiled, then rushed ahead, Garret's lens following my desperate steps toward the last moments of childhood.

 

 

About Carrie K. Sorensen

 

I am the mommy of two fantastic little boys, three boxers and one mutt. My husband and my story is truly a fairy tale of modern origins. I attended Arizona State University for a B.A. but am lucky enough to be a stay at home mother to my amazing brood.

 

I write in whatever free time I can steal for myself, mostly fantasy or paranormal. I have lived in the country, the city and the suburbs, and I definitely prefer the suburbs. Still, the forest is what inspires me most, with velvet shadows, hidden nooks and possible fairy circles around the next corner.

 

http://chasingrevery.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

Back to the Beach by George Beckingham

 

Megan could almost smell the salt air. It had been four years since she had visited the beach house, but now that she was headed back there, she could remember every sound, every smell, every sensation of the beach. She hungered for it now, despite the events that had led to her long absence.

 

She turned off the Interstate onto the small county road that led to the village of Hilo--named in honor of the owner of the only gas station in town, who had inexplicably moved away from the island state to an area that actually had winter, even if it was shorter and milder than Megan had grown up with in Minnesota.

 

Megan cruised through Hilo, then turned the corner onto the last road in her long journey. The pavement ended and the rumbling of gravel under her tires brought back a vivid memory of the song she was listening to the last time she drove this way. Sweet Emotion, the best song Aerosmith had ever recorded. She had listened to it on an old CD at the time, but now she pressed a few buttons on her satellite radio and had Stephen Tyler's voice blasting out of her speakers in half a minute.

 

The shore was just ahead now. Megan passed by the first beach house in a row of eight, and saw the diving board that marked the location of the derelict pool of her former neighbor. A beautiful house near a perfect beach, and he had a pool! Well, not anymore. The steadily shifting sands had filled it almost completely, and appeared to have filled half the living room that was visible through the remains of the glass doors.

 

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