I want to tell you a true story about the winter I spent in Fort Mohave, Arizona.

In November of 1997 my husband, Rick and I were living in Rogue River, Oregon. We lived on my father’s non-working farm with our three cats, eight chickens, and a dog. We were having some problems, I won’t go into. We decided we needed three months away from home to relieve some of the stress.  

Rick’s father had passed away a short time before this. He and his older brother inherited their father’s...

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This story was written for an alphabet challenge and previously published on another site. The challenge was to start each sentence with a letter of the alphabet, using each on in order, beginning with J.

Just looking around my house made me sad. Kitty was nowhere to be found, and the drab walls seemed to echo my loneliness. Long afternoon shadows stretched across the dusty floor. Messy piles of clutter squatted on every surface, and the air was chill. Neglect cast its sorrowful pall over my...

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Jack lugged their groceries to the parking lot, struggling against the familiar sick weakness. Knowing what he would find, he nonetheless gazed upward.

Lines of white stretched across the blue sky in a grid formation.

“My god, they’re at it again!” he mumbled, tossing sacks into the back seat of the car. “No one should have to put up with this, Pearl.”

“Oh, Jack,” she whispered softly, crestfallen. “Please don’t start that again.”

“Quit treating me like ...

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