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The Week
I wrote this story years ago in the days of Polaroid cameras and cassette recorders. I’ve brought it up to date and revised it in other ways. Toni lay in bed. She was alone since her husband Chris was away on a business trip. She lay on her back and almost automatically her legs spread…
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Amazing Grace
Grace was working during the summer at the nursery at Berry Forge up in Canada. It made a change from campus life to be out in the country and in the open air all day, away from the city. At weekends she would normally go hiking, but this weekend would be different since, somewhat to…
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Roman Classics Major Adrienne
Siquis in hoc artem populo non novit amandi, Hoc legat et lecto carmine doctus amet. Should anyone here not know the art of love, read this, and learn by reading how to love. “Oh shit,” thought Adrienne as she moved the complete works of Ovid to one side. Underneath was the application form for the archeological…
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French Kissing
Maybe it was because they were both ex-patriates living in the south of France. Maybe it was the early summer. Maybe it was the chilled rose wine that flowed copiously. Or the wonderful provencale food. Or that after a dozen years of marriage and three children her sex life was routine and infrequent. But mostly…
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Matchbook
Near Ypres, France 1918 Everybody knew that the Great War was inching inexorably towards its end. But death was still everywhere. The Americans had entered the war and their fresh soldiers rejuvenated the battle-weary allied troops exhausted after four years of attrition. In a field hospital a few miles beyond the killing grounds of the…
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Jack and Jill
Friday night, a bar in Edinburgh Scotland “A Jack Daniels please” Simon had his back to her and hadn’t seen her enter the bar. He turned around. She was wearing a business-like outfit: skirt, blouse, jacket. Probably just come straight from work. “Now a woman who orders Jack Daniels here has to be worth talking…
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Wallpaper
This is set back when I was a student in Britain. I really did have a bedroom that was so small that the bed was on a platform above the closet. And the room was wallpapered. Unfortunately the rest of the story is invented… Cecilia arrived at Gareth’s flat. He had just bought the place…
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The Temple Slave
Selection Karen was a slave. Karen’s master lived in a manor house outside the town. She was out doing errands for her master walking along the road into town. She was dressed like all slaves in a brown shift of coarse material, with a rope belt. She was short, with a mass of untidy blonde…
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Wars of the Roses
This is a fantasy of a friend of mine told me. It originally had a more generic background, but I turned it into a story with a historical background. Don’t bother telling me that the history is all wrong, the facts have to bend to align with the story. I put this in under the…