Making Changes
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I am in distribution. Ok, so I drive a truck. But I also distribute.

Long-haul work is hard. Guys like me don’t get paid enough. What’s wrong with supplementing income? Shit goes missing all the time. Some of what goes missing ends up in my lock-up. Some of that gets sold for cash. What’s the big deal?

I'd been called queer practically ever since I started school, but I didn't really find out what it meant until seventh grade. This was back when gay still meant happy to most people, and queer was an insult.

 

Part 18 of 29

Wednesday, September 4, 2013 (continued)
All of my musing on the past is how I started my day. Because of my late enrollment, the only English Literature class with any openings occurred at eight o'clock on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Since Monday was Labor Day, school started on Wednesday. Thus I began my day wandering around campus lost and confused. Over the summer I had gotten used to the library's more civilized hours, opening at ten. I had to get up before the sun in order to shower, dress and ride the bus.

Chapter 1

"MOMMY, MOMMY, MOMMY!" I heard my daughter scream. I dropped everything
and ran outside, thinking the worst. Did she fall, did she hurt herself,
did something or somebody scare her? It took me a minute to figure out
where her pleas were coming from and my panic level tripled, thinking
"Please, please, let her be safe!" Imagine my relief when I saw my
daughter hiding next to her playhouse; petrified by a tiny spider.

Muse
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

“You do believe that my work is art, don’t you,” said Claude.

“Of course, I do,” Blythe said. “And I only want to play a role in helping you to be that artist.”

And that, is the title and essence of this story.

Nancy encounters Gotham

 

Part 17 of 29

Monday, September 2, 2013
Labor day. Time for the big parade.

We were up early to get ready for the parade. The living room was full of boxes and hangers containing the costumes when my fellow workers arrived promptly at 8:00 AM to get dressed. Jenny and Beth from the library were part of the group, as well as Audrey.

Nancy sets forth in the world, qualified by her care of Little Edward, "hopeless as a boy."

Part 2

I woke up in the morning to the sound of a womans’ voice telling me to get out of bed and into the shower. I thought that I had been in the shower last night but obviously I was not clean enough. She told me to make sure I sat when I went to the toilet and to make sure I shaved my face twice while I was in the shower.

All was quiet in the house. The Sun had risen well over an hour earlier. The hum of London grew as the city started a new day.

There were two occupants of the house. For one of them this was a day to celebrate. For the other, the prospect of walkies, rabbits to chase and food was normal.

In a bedroom at the front of the three-storey terraced house, Vivienne Carter was wide awake. Today was her sixtieth birthday, plus it was the first day of what she’d been calling her ‘afterlife’. She’d just retired from her job as very senior official at the HMRC in the ‘Collections Department’. The previous day which had been a rather sad occasion. Vivienne, could have carried on working for at least six more years until she qualified for a state pension but she’d had enough of work, commuting and putting up with the incompetence of other people for far too long so she'd decided several months before to call it a day when she turned sixty years of age.