dreamszilla

When Annie is plunged into grief after the death of her cat, her colleagues and friends are unsympathetic. Image generated with OpenAI Following a breakfast hardly worthy of the name, Annie sat with her cup of coffee on the porch, swinging listlessly as she watched huge, sculpted flakes of snow blow across her front yard. The wind sang through the black, denuded boughs of her hickory trees. Although the outdoor thermometer showed the temperature to be a bitterly cold 12 degrees Fahrenheit, Annie didn't feel the chill in the air. She did, however, feel the coldness of isolation and depression and a continuing deep sense of loss closing in on her. She cast her mind back several weeks, to the two day's voluntary absence she'd taken from work. Annie, 60, had worked for half of her life at Mercer Portfolio as an executive secretary. She knew, as did her employer, that she was very good at her job, and her record of attendance had been nearly spotless. She hadn'...

Janos picks up his friend's aunt and remembers her love of Hungarian poet Petofi. Image generated with OpenAI A text message arrived one morning from my friend. His aunt was arriving from the countryside that morning for her annual physical. She was planning to stay at the apartment of her two oldest friends, two spinster sisters, but the friends were out, just then, at a cherry-picking festival. Would I be so kind to collect his aunt at the train station and usher her to the apartment until the sisters arrived home later that day? The key would be under the mat. I checked my schedule, and, finding no other occupations in my morning, I sent him back a short response asking for the arrival time of his aunt's train. I boarded the tram for the station, and, as the car slowly moved through the streets, I tried to remember what I knew of my friend's aunt. I met her when my friend and I were in high school together, when she still lived here in the city. She had liv...