There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe

which grows in the neighbouring garden of a witch. Her husband sneaks into the garden and steals from the witch, angering her and makes a deal that allows him to get all the rapunzel his wife desires in exchange for their unborn child. Once the child was born the witch locked her up in a tower away from everybody. Alternately in the Disney version the Queen becomes sick while with child and needs a magical flower to help heal her, and a witch needs the same flower to keep her young and…

lifetime away, to another woman, to another time, to memories he’d always hold dear to his heart. Thoughts of his own wife made him wonder how Jake had ever let Kat get away. The last two months had passed in a flurry. He had to admit, getting to know Kat and Abby made him happier than he’d ever imagined. They’d shared many wonderful hours strolling along the decks of the paddle-wheeled steamboats to taking horseback rides in the country. On several of those rides, he’d set up old bottles to…

dream of my family being similar to the Brady Bunch, the tragic reality is, we are nothing like a sitcom family. My only family is my drunk, druggy, prostitute mother, who is not exactly the ideal person to bring to an elementary school career day. My mother, whom I call by her first name, Katherine, and myself live in a small, shoe box sized one-bedroom, one-bath apartment. I sleep in the bedroom on a mattress that rests on the floor;…

bed side because of my restless sleeping and I was missing my left sock. My mouth tasted of the Whopper I devoured the night before and my lips smacking together brought back the overpowering combination of mustard, mayonnaise, and ketchup back onto my taste buds. The wooden mirror propped up on the wall across from my bed showed a crusty middle aged man with exceedingly uncomfortable facial hair and a stained tank top. The usual start of my day was the stereotypical business man morning: suit…

my ax. In the storeroom was a zed that looked like he had been living there before turning. Bashing them is harder when there’s no room for maneuver but he went down finally. Yuri started working on the big door to the loading ramp and the others followed me back inside. The shopping crew grabbed carts and I started pointing. Somewhere along the line we quit looking at sizes and just started grabbing all the jeans, all the shirts and all the coats. In the back was more cold weather…

“You would say this was the end of the story of Muhammad: He and a tiny group, shut away in the sand, alone on the planet, encircled by men so wild they buried children alive as a point of honor, who killed casually, and who – because His teachings meant the destruction of the national religion and the loss of their own wealth and power – had for thirteen long years been waiting to shed His blood. An enemy of His has written: ‘We search in vain through the pages of profane history for a parallel…

Judge Thatcher has taken Huck’s money and has invested it with a dollar of interest per day and now lives with Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson, Huck’s tutor. He lives with these two women because his mother died when he was younger and his father is a drunk, who cannot take care of himself properly. The two women in his life try to “sivilize” him and he starts becoming frustrated at living in a clean house and minding his manners. Huck is notified that his father drowned in the river.…

first appeared in “Lilly and Ian, Mouse and Dragon” which was published by Partridge, Singapore in 2015. That book was inspired by the author’s love of a Chinese woman called Lilly. Of this collection the author writes, “I showed other stories I had written to a publisher in China and he said they did not teach the children anything and was not interested in publishing them. So I left and wondered what the best thing to teach a child was. I am still asking myself that same question. In…

man with the strident voice was still talking remorselessly away. A young woman who was perhaps his secretary, and who was sitting with her back to Winston, was listening to him and seemed to be eagerly agreeing with everything that he said. From time to time Winston caught some such remark as 'I think you're so right, I do so agree with you', uttered in a youthful and rather silly feminine voice. But the other voice never stopped for an instant, even when the girl was speaking. Winston knew the…

Chapter Fifteen ‘One Last Call’ When Harper slouched into her Monday morning registration class after a mournful weekend lamenting her dismal display at the science exhibition, she wished the day was over already. As she waited for an unusually late Miss. Turncroft to take to her desk for the morning register, Harper turned her attention from the empty space at the front of the class, to the empty space out the window. The clear blue sky had turned a distraught grey, whilst a giant monstrosity…