Category Archives: The Stories

Three Days: Weekly Writing Prompt #29

Posted on by under The Stories

Time limitations have kept me from joining in on the SECRET KEEPER’S WEEKLY WRITING PROMPTS THESE LAST WEEKS.

I have intentionally put aside time this week to join in. You can see all of this week’s contributions by clicking the underlined link above.

This week’s five prompt words are: | WEB | LOST | BLACK | SCRATCH | LOCK |

What follows is a Shadorma in honor of the Passion Week

Shadorma (3 – 5 – 3 – 3 – 7 – 5)
six lines – no rhymes – multiple stanzas [your choice] – just follow meter

100_1806

Three Days

by JE Lillie

Day One: Death.

Scratch rejoiced as Christ

Succumbed on

Man’s black cross

Had love lost the day? Night reigned.

Captivity wept.

Day Two: Chained.

Scratch locked Christ in Hell.

His web wound

Bound Christ tight.

Jesus smiled and love woke life

In Hell. Demons shook.

Then He Rose.

Scratch’s keys were lost

Captive hearts

Shouted loud.

As Christ led through the black night

To third day freedom.

The Secret Keeper Prompt #27

Posted on by under The Stories

I haven’t been able to participate in the SECRET KEEPER’S WRITING PROMPT  for a couple of weeks. I simply couldn’t miss another week.  So this week I am determined to make time, plain and simple.

Our prompt words for the week are:| WORTH | SPARK | PLOT | QUAKE | SPY |

Here is my Tanka prayer called Love On Me

Love On Me

by JE Lillie

Divine spark plot your

Course. Anticipate my fear.

Spy out my quaking

Heart. Undo my sabotage.

Let me know at last my own worth.

100_3338

 

A Lover’s Heart: SKWWP#24

Posted on by under The Stories

It’ s time for SKWWP#24 (The Secret Keeper’s Weekly Writing Prompt #24). You can find all the submissions to this challenge by clicking the underlined link. My bit is below and it is entitled:

A Lover’s Heart

By Je Lillie

Walk another mile

With me old friend. Your promise

To take the long view

Still stands. Let’s beat the odds by

loving each other like God.

Ireland 517

Our buzz words this week are | WALK | OLD | PROMISE | VIEW | BEAT |

This week’s offering is a tanka.

Tanka poetry rhythm is  5 – 7 – 5 – 7 – 7 in one stanza. Many times tanka poetry focuses around the theme of love and relationships.

Let me ask, who do you think is the narrator in this poem and who is he/she speaking to? Who else could it be?

First Flower: Friday Fictioneers

Posted on by under The Stories

PHOTO PROMPT © The Reclining Gentleman

First Flower

By JE Lillie

He was invisible. The third of seven children. His two elder brothers were soldiers in the war. His sisters were startling beauties. Then of course there was Bobby, the baby, the favorite. It was a miracle he didn’t forget his own name in the shadow of his siblings.

“Sam, Sam! that’s it.” the girl at the register exclaimed.

“What’s that?” Sam asked.

“Your name. Your name is Samuel right? I see you at school everyday. ” Her smile blinded him.

Just like that buying a loaf of bread turned into falling in love.

fUSCIA

Happy Valentines! This is my response to Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers Challenge.

Every week about 100 authors share 100-word stories regarding a photo prompt chosen by Rochelle.

This week Another of Rochelle’s regular contributors has won an award for her short story. Congratulations to Margaret Leggatt! Her award winning story “COMING UP ROSES”, CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING HERE.

Something Was Missing

Posted on by under The Stories, Uncategorized

In Other Words

“Unhappiness is caused by believing that something 
is missing that we need to be happy.”
Gina Lake

I have learned through the coursing of years that just about everything you have can be taken away: People, businesses, jobs, money, marriages, relationships, houses, lands, opportunities, education, they all come and go like the wind, blowing like a hurricane one minute dead calm the next.

Now I would never imply that the things in the list above are not important or are not to be desired. However staking life’s happiness on any of these things is not only certain ruin, it is idolatry. The people around you were never meant to be your fulfillment. Your job is not supposed to be your source. Your relationships, even your marriage, are not supposed to be your completion. Guess what. Your spouse cannot complete you. Husbands you are the head of your wives.Wives you are the help mate of your husbands, but only God completes them.

There is only ONE  whose loss should make us unhappy. Strangely, in spite of the God shaped hole in our lives, many of us seem to be perfectly fine skipping through life without the ONE TRUE SOURCE OF HAPPINESS.  We curse our luck at not winning the lottery. We throw fits if we lose our job or the girl friend cheats on us.  Yet we never even consider that none of these things could ever make us truly happy anyway. All the while God sits back just waiting for us to believe that He is the One thing missing that we need to be happy.  For those of us who have come to know that truth, well, life just can’t keep us down anymore.

What about you? Do you believe that God is the one thing missing? Have you found Jesus yet? If not what are you going to do about that?

This post is written in response to PATRICIA’S IN OTHER WORDS CHALLENGE.

Summer River: Weekly Writing Prompt #23

Posted on by under The Stories

THE SECRET KEEPER  has released his weekly writing prompt and I am ready to frame my newest shadorma.  Click the link above to discover what other secrets are being kept by our host.

Our prompt words this week are: | STARE | RIVER | HOLD | TRUE | WEAR |

Summer River

by JE Lillie

Hold me fast

With your languid stare.

Bind my gaze

Reflection.

Summer River tie me there

By the bank of lies.

_

Heated days

Wear that smile. Call truth

Deception.

Vernal days

Tell me falsehoods if only

To restore my peace.

_

Current flow

Wash away the days

Of facing

Perception.

Let warm waters reassure

Ignorance is bliss.

wpid-20150713_152115.jpg

Shadorma (3 – 5 – 3 – 3 – 7 – 5)
six lines – no rhymes – multiple stanzas [your choice] – just follow meter

In Other Words: I Could Not Couldn’t Do It

Posted on by under The Stories

In Other Words

It is time once again to write a piece for Patricia’s In Other Words Challenge. The challenge is to write a piece of flash fiction from a quote she offers.

Here is the quote:

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” 
Henry Ford

My offering is below and you can find Patricia’s other contributors at the underlined link above.

I Could Not Couldn’t Do It

By JE Lillie

I have known moments in this journey when I was certain I couldn’t do it. I have wanted to pack my bags and leave so many times. I suppose no one would blame me if I did.

When I was about ten we had this wealthy neighbor. Her name was Anna. At the time, I thought she was about two hundred years old but she was only about sixty. My difficulty with telling her age wasn’t that I was afflicted with the “old person ceiling”, which makes young people think everyone over twenty-five is ancient. Anna’s life made her old before her time. Somewhere along the way she had begun to medicate  the pains of her heart with whiskey, but it didn’t work to heal what was broken on the inside. Each year found Anna a bit older and a lot meaner.

Anna needed a maid having lost the will to clean for herself. My mother took the job. I was young but not so young that I couldn’t see the toll it took on Mom. Many times she came home from Anna’s in tears.

I suppose had my father been alive he would have told my mother to quit the job and that would have been it. But life had a lesson to teach me in Dad’s absence so Mom kept working at Anna’s, if for no other reason than to teach me that you cannot give up on people.

Mom never complained about the work. She never missed a day. Anna never got better but that wasn’t because Mom didn’t try. When Anna had her first stroke Mom began working more to make sure Anna ate like she was supposed to. I don’t know exactly when I realized it but at some point I came to the knowledge that Mom was not working for Anna because of the paycheck. Mom worked for Anna because she loved her.

After Anna died people met Mom at the funeral and called her a saint for “putting up with Anna”. Many told her that for years they had been concerned because they felt Mom was trapped in the job. Invariably they asked her why she had stayed and reminded her that she could have at any point just said that she couldn’t do it anymore.

To this day I can still remember Mom’s response. “Anna needed help whether she wanted it or not. I thought about quitting once and that week Father Sweeney preached a message I shall never forget from Philippians 4:13 called,”I Could Not Couldn’t Do it.” After hearing that sermon I just couldn’t say I couldn’t help, because really I could.”

I think about this story everyday as I am helping Mom out of bed, as I am getting her dressed and brushing her teeth, as I am helping her on the toilet or helping her in the shower. Alzheimer’s is a devastating disease. It feels like it is beyond me, but I could not couldn’t do this. Thank you Father Sweeney.

100_3329

Purposeful Practitioner: The Careless Prince!

Posted on by under The Stories

I am joining in on a new challenge today hosted by Roger Shipp. His blog can be found HERE ALONG WITH THE STORIES OF HIS OTHER CONTRIBUTORS.

The photo prompt for this week is…

public-domain-images-free-stock-photos-high-quality-resolution-downloads-around-the-house-8-1000x666

And our opening line is, “You lookin’ at me?”

The Careless Prince

By JE Lillie

“You lookin’ at me?” The mirror said in its best Brooklyn accent.

” Hey you wit da horns stop ya starin’.”

If it had spoken in an English accent, even French, I probably would have tumbled to the fact that I was in the house of Brunhilde. But everyone knows magic mirrors don’t come from New York and well witches are supposed to be all bumpy and scaly not super- modelesque.

Then again Charmings are not supposed to be plumbers. But after the glamour wars the royal family fell on hard times and hiding out as day labor seemed to be the thing to do.

Cindy had called us not three weeks ago and told us that the witch was hunting heads again, but I didn’t take it seriously. I should have listened. I wasn’t under the sink five minutes before Brunny was waving that wand of hers, turning me into a deer.

Cindy wasn’t kidding. Brunhilde was hunting heads. She cut mine off and stuck it to the wall. Now I can only stare into my reflection and listen to the mirror practice his shtick for the next prince who walks through the door.

Friday Fictioneers: Beyond the Lilys

Posted on by under The Stories

It is time for another sharing of flash fiction with FRIDAY FICTIONEERS.

This is the place where 100 authors come to share 100 words regarding a photo which Rochelle our hostess chooses and posts 0n Wednesday.

This week we are honoring Sandra Crook who is one of Rochelle’s regular contributors. Sandra has won First Place in Flash 500. You can find Sandra’s work at her blog HERE.

Congrats Sandra!!!

And now on with the show!

PHOTO PROMPT © Erin Leary

Photo by: Erin Leary

Beyond the Lilys

By JE Lillie

Elon looked out across the lake to the village from which he had been exiled. The lights from each hearth were just coming to life. He glowered in jealousy as he wrapped himself in the rags that were his only clothes, while warming his hands  by the smoky peat fire.

The baby cried softly at his mother’s breast and Elon passed a gentle hand over his son’s brow. He looked lovingly into his wife’s eyes.

“Kathleen I promise ye we will not starve and I will make ye a new home here beyond the lilys.”

In my imagination this is one way in which my family could have obtained its name.

tomb

The Cliff Walk: Writing Prompt #22

Posted on by under The Stories

The SECRET KEEPER has issued our next writing challenge. Our buzz words for the week are:SENSE | SECURE | WALK | TIME | ALONE |

This week I am choosing to put out a flash fiction piece.

The Cliff Walk

Craggy Coast.jpg

By JE Lillie

She has been gone seven years. Still I often come to this place alone to walk along the craggy shore line. I can sense her in the salty wind that whispers through the air with all the poignancy of a lost love, taste her briny kiss across time like some backhanded rejection. It hurts like the shutting of the casket, but I long for it if only to keep her memory alive.

This place, our place, where we first held hands. I remember her smooth fingers slipping against my calloused palm as I helped her over the sea-smoothed rocks to the ocean’s edge so she could wade in the surf. I can still see her holding the legs of her jeans up, trying and failing to keep the ocean from anointing her with the holy water of reminiscence.  She laughed. I laughed in those days before, when the Cliff Walk along the ocean’s edge was not a knife to the heart. Still, a knife to the heart is better than feeling nothing and so I have chosen to return year after year to conjure, if only through tears, the time forever lost.

This time is different.

I climb to the pine-encrusted knoll where we last stood together. I think of that day. Her thin frame was already a ghost held together by bones and tumors, almost gone but not quite. She held my hand like always that day.

“Find someone new.” She whispered.

“Stop.” I said.

We both cried. Her head scarf was lost in the breeze as we kissed for what was to be the final time.

Wiping away a tear I remove the urn from its satchel. I tilt it ever so slightly and let the wind take her ashes.

“Good bye.” I say again, but this time I mean it.

A gentle hand caresses my back. I feel her lips touch my shoulder. As she puts her arm through mine I can see, in the moonlight, she is weeping with me, grieving alongside me. I am secure in the knowledge, my wife would have liked her.