Short Stories WR Woodbury

MAURA      As the second child, I had an older brother who wasn’t happy with me from the start because he wanted another brother and that’s not what he got.  As soon as I could walk he bullied me into playing pirates, soldiers, Robin Hood, any game that I was sure to lose so he could be the champion.  I was two years younger, smaller, and hampered by the clothes our mum made me wear.  When I was four, she told me "trousers aren’t for young ladies," and that was that.   I was supposed to stay off the ground and be careful about how I sat down.  If I came home with skinned knees or if the back of my dress was dirty, she’d smack the bejesus out of me.  Dad wasn’t home often or he’d have knocked me just as silly like he did when he got home after a night out with his knackers.  When I was a teenager I hung around the docks a lot, I guess thinking if my dad spent most of his time at sea, there must be something to it.  I met a boy who worked on a ship, and without meaning to, I fe

  It always came back to the first one.  The rest had been for survival but the first one happened out of nowhere, almost like popping off a scolding squirrel if it got on his nerves.. The Walther PPK and a box of shells he found in his grandpa’s bedroom had done a good job. The gun looked like a black water pistol but it was ten times heavier.   After a few weeks of shooting up bottles and cans he was bored, so tried blowing the heads off a few chickens. He was ready for more serious game but was worried about getting close enough to a large animal to kill it with a pistol.  If things didn’t go right, a grizzly would make mincemeat out of him.  The faggot was an easy target.  As he ran to get away, he was staggering all over the road so Ralph thought his first shot had missed, but then the guy dropped to his knees and disappeared into the weeds.  When he got to where the faggot had sneaked away, Ralph’s eyes took a few seconds to get used to the moonlight as he paced the edge of the

C Major. The dead man heard the piano chord at Hamburg Airport and had installed it as the doorbell.  A normal buzzer or ding-dong would be out of place among the Garry oak, red arbutus, and twisted pines along the shore.  When the windows are open to the seafront terrace, the ozone from the ocean mixes with the scent of the woods and fingers its way through the house like a loping piano sonata.  If nobody is looking, the raccoons follow the same path so it is one of Thomas’s jobs to keep them at bay.   Like a sword-fighting cavalier, he drives the light-fingered bandits out of the dining room with a broom and a cattle prod, hoping to zap one on the rear end and send a warning to its den.  “Pass that onto your family” he says if he connects with a good poke. The big windows that look across the water to San Juan Island, are not visible from the front entrance of the house. When visitors come in the front door, they are stunned by the panoramic sea view through the windows.  The d