dreamszilla

Christopher, John and Tonya get a surprise when their ageing father announces he is engaged to be married to a woman he's never met; by JSP Jacobs. My older sister, Tonya, calls at 6:30am. I'm just out of the shower, wrapped in a towel. "Christopher, did you get the text from Dad?" she asks. I squint at my phone screen, not having yet put my contacts in, and search for notification of a new message. "Does Dad know how to text?" "It says he's getting married again," Tonya says. "It says, in these exact words, 'I proposed marriage to Edith Joan Callahan of Gainesville, Florida and she accepted.'" "Who?" "That woman he's been talking to on the phone for a month. I told you about her, remember? The retired librarian who's never been married." "Did he fly to Florida without us knowing?" "No! He's never even seen her; he has no idea what she looks like. I've only he...

Fred Russell tells of a chambermaid with a murderously unconventional approach to love. The chambermaid was a sturdy girl but very pretty. Had she been shorter he might have thought of her as squat or stout but she was just the right height to bear her weight. He'd stayed at the hotel a couple of times before but had never noticed her. Maybe she'd been working on a different floor. It seemed to him that she was leaning over the bed very provocatively, showing him the backs of her sumptuous thighs. Raymond wasn't bashful. "What I wouldn't give to make love to you," he said. "What would you give?" she said. Without saying a word, Raymond took out his wallet, extracted a hundred-dollar bill, and laid it on the night table, and without saying a word the girl began to undress. Then she stood before him naked. Her powerful body was magnificent. He lay her down on the bed and ran his hands over her belly and her breasts. "I'm not a whore,...

Twenty-nine grandchildren are kept in thrall of their seafaring grandfather, his mysterious adventures, and the beautiful pearl necklace he gifted to their grandmother; by Tom Sheehan. The only heirloom my grandmother had was her pearl necklace, a gift from Grandfather, the single piece of property she clung to during the Depression and the years that followed. It was cached for years in a small box entrusted to a small sewing table, which none of us dared touch. The necklace was exquisite in its perfection of thirty pearls, each one a most marvelous entity in its own presentation. It was, as seen on rare occasion, so resplendently beautiful on her neck, so icily beautiful, we wondered for its reward what ship the old sea captain had run aground. He grew up on N. Sheffield, not far from the Chicago River North Branch. First on the river and then on the lakes he had come of age. Water was his milieu however it spread, and it brought a maturity to him, and a yearning that ultimately...