Natolie Webb

Two Sentence Stories by Genre

YA:

I knew what she was going to say—that I tricked her, like I could somehow fool her into thinking she wanted to kiss another girl, like she hadn’t spent the entire month flirting with me, finding excuses to be alone with me, and finally, luring me backstage, pulling me close to her and sticking her tongue in my mouth—the compromising position in which we were caught. But even though she was about to out me, and it was going to cause me a ton of pain and difficulty, I knew the wrath she would face from her conservative Christian parents, and so, I sat there, numbly, my head in my hands, and let her lie.

Romance:

In her anger, her words had slipped out with the force of a freight train carrying 10,000 tons of cargo, hitting him so hard, she could almost see him thrown bac k against the wall. In reality, he had crumpled at her meaning, and in that moment, in that simple deflation of all his bravado, she saw his vulnerability, and unable to fight her sudden urges, she went to him, pulled him into her arms, brushed a small tear from his eye, and kissed him full on the mouth; a kiss he reciprocated with gusto, and thus, their romance had begun.

Speculative:

The demon came to him in dreams, from which he awoke screaming in fear and ecstasy all at once, praying for someone, something to release him from this thing that possessed him before it dragged him to hell; but it was too late. He’d known that from the moment it entered his bed, entered his body, entered his soul, and he knew it now, as he dressed, descended the stairs, and slipped out into the darkness, in search of his first kill.

Contemporary:

Tears swam in her eyes, though she’d thought she was past them—that she’d stopped caring long ago—but how could they not, when there, on the other side of the glass, her brother lay covered by only a sheet, hooked to an IV that would soon push a lethal mixture into his waiting vein. Behind her, a woman sobbed, the mother of the victim, and she felt suddenly small for her tears, for caring about him so deeply, when he had committed so heinous a crime, and so she stepped back to take a seat with the others, offering her hand to the sobbing woman, risking a gesture of comfort, for which she fully expected rebuff; but she was wrong, and surprising though it was, the woman accepted her hand and squeezed, offering a return measure of comfort, for which she felt wholly unworthy.

Tangled and Untangled

Photo credit (A jack-o-lantern in the dark)

When I found him, he was crying and trembling on the ground. He sat with his back against the stone wall, skinny arms wrapped around skinny legs, his face buried in his knees.

“Ernie, what happened?”

“My cape got caught, and someone stole my candy,” the boy sobbed.

I took my flashlight and pointed it at the bushes, the beam revealing a red cape, tangled in the bare branches. I examined his costume to see where the cape attached, thinking perhaps I could untie it, but it was attached to his shirt.

“Ok. I see it . . . worst case scenario, you could take off your shirt, but it’s cold. I’m going to see if I can detangle it first.”

“Ok,” he sniffled.

I went to work on the cape, which turned out to be a worse job than I thought at first. The branches were thorny, and the cape had ripped in several places. Finding the biggest rip, I pulled at it until it ripped the rest of the way down the cape, allowing me to pull it free of the branches. After doing this with several smaller rips, I was able to free him. I helped him to his feet, this shredded, sniffling Superman, and pulled him in for a hug, grateful he didn’t resist.

“I’m sorry, Bub. This was a crappy way to end your Halloween.”

“I shouldn’t have run away.”

“No. You shouldn’t have, but I think you’ve paid a high enough price.” He pulled back from the hug, but reached up for my hand, melting my heart. “You scared me, you know,” I said, my voice husky with emotion.

“I’m sorry.”

“Listen.” I stopped, stooping to his level to look him in the eyes, “I know you were mad that your father had to work,” I paused, wondering if I should say the next bit, but deciding I needed to, I plowed ahead, “Ernie, I know you want your mom here, and I know I can’t take her place, but we’re going to be together, doing stuff like this. How about we try to have a friendship of our own.”

Tears ran down his face, and I wasn’t sure if it was fear, humiliation, or the mention of his dead mother, but he nodded and accepted the quick hug I offered.

“C’mon, then. Let’s go take care of the candy situation.”

“I don’t want to trick or treat anymore, Kellie.”

“You don’t have to. We’re going to Walmart, and I’m going to buy you a big bag of candy, whatever you want.”

Still reticent, he nodded, then looked up and gave me a quick smile through his tears. I took his hand while we walked back to the house, but my free hand couldn’t help but pat my belly lovingly from time to time as we walked. Maybe we could make this little family work after all. I smiled at the future for the first time in ages.

Nightmare in the Fog

Photo Credit:https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-s-hand-touching-wall-626163/

The townspeople placed the entrails in the sea, and prayed for peace, knowing it could never be more than fleeting. When the deed was done, they congregated briefly to bathe in a momentary sense of relief before heading off to their respective beds to relive the nightmare. They’d bested the monster, but they would never again be free.

Will awoke in his usual cold sweat, dressed in the hushed darkness of his shared bedroom, and crept out into the rolling fog. He headed to the courthouse, a feeling of unease weighing his shoulders so heavily that his feet resisted movement.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a sudden movement on the beach, but when he turned and squinted into the fog, he saw nothing but the movement of the waves lapping against the shore. Shivering, he doubled his pace. At the courthouse he opened the heavy door, and stepped over the threshold, feeling the relief of warmth and light.

Passing into the office, he sloughed off his parka, hanging it on the coatrack by the door. In the breakroom, he pushed aside a carton of ice cream in the freezer, reaching for a wrapped breakfast sandwich. He microwaved it, brought it to his desk, and sat poring over the day’s dockets.

“Mighty foggy out there today, Will,” Jasper’s oversized form lurked in the doorway, blocking nearly all the light from the hallway beyond.

“Ayut. Sure is.”

“A little creepy, yeah?”

“Huh.” Will turned his attention back to the dockets, but Jasper stayed frozen in the doorway.

Will sighed, looking back up. “Something you need, Jas?”

Jasper didn’t answer. His mouth was a frozen O and Will felt a sense of horror bloom within as blood began pouring from his friend’s eyes.

“Jas! Jas! What the…” but he didn’t need to finish the question. A tentacle exploded from the center of Jasper’s chest, and a familiar black shape slithered formed at his back. The creature lifted Jasper, quickly encasing his still-alive body within its gelatinous mass. Jasper’s face was the only part of him that remained visible, his mouth still stretched in an expression of horror, blood pouring into it from his eyes.

Will jumped from his chair, knocking it to the ground behind him. Jumping over it, he ran for the back door, pulling the alarm on the way. A warning klaxon sounded through the town, and within moments the villagers emerged from their houses armed and ready.

“THE MONSTER HAS RETURNED. IT’S IN THE COURTHOUSE. GO! QUICKLY!”

Without losing pace, Will hastened up the hill to the old lighthouse where they had planned their defense. Reaching it first, he entered at a run, and looked back . . . only to find he was alone.

He stood in the doorway for a moment, shivering, as the chill from the fog found its way to his bones. From below, a shape began to emerge—a slithering, creeping shape—whose entrails slid on the ground behind it. As it grew closer, he recognized the faces of his loved ones. Jasper. His wife, Freya. His—he gulped in horror—his five-year-old twins.

As the creature crept closer, Will lost all muscle tone, along with his will to fight. He slumped to the ground, screaming in grief more than terror. The creature answered in a cacophony of overlapping screams, overtaking him without a fight.

Will woke up again, bathed in a cold sweat. He dressed in the darkness and headed out into the rolling fog . . .

Ode to My Husband’s Driving

Photo Credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-wing-mirror-451590/

Don’t worry, my darling. I haven’t yet shit.

Despite all the cars you’ve just nearly hit

However, my hand holds the handle so tight…

My skin has gone pale, and my eyes are shut tight.

I shake and I shiver. I gasp and I moan.

It might sound more sexy, if we were at home.

But I’m not sure we’ll get there. We may not survive.

Please stop running red lights, so we’ll get home alive

Defining Moments

If it hadn’t been for the way his eyes filled with tears and vulnerability when she entered the room, her heart might not have skipped a beat and she might not have paused long enough for him to speak. But it did, and so, she did, and in that tiny spark of a moment, he managed to say the words she yearned to hear.

“I see you and I know I hurt you. Please can we try again?”

“I don’t know if I can heal from this.” She wondered now why she was talking, why his words even mattered to her at all. She wondered why she still stood there, halfway across the threshold, her getaway car parked uselessly in the driveway. She had meant to turn around, get in the car and let her cousin drive her home. She had meant not to see him at all, but to quietly pick up her things and leave for good. “Why are you here? I told you I didn’t want to talk.”

“I’m sorry. I wanted to respect your boundary, but I had this one last chance to say it and I wanted to say it.” With the word, ‘boundary’ her resolve hardened. How dare he be here now, sitting on the couch where they had first made love, looking at her with his puppy dog eyes, like they had had a trivial fight about the bills, or her mother, or the fact that she had worked late and missed his family’s cookout? She felt the anger growing within, like a fire that burned her soul to a crisp, sending all her trust and innocence to the wind in a cloud of smoke. It was gone, she thought. It’s not like you can catch smoke in your hands and stuff it back in. She could almost see it drifting away, fading into the afternoon sky. She was left with cynicism, mistrust, and fear. She would forever be broken.

“Well, you said it and my answer is no. No more chances, no more trying again. Don’t you understand? You destroyed me. You destroyed us. My heart may still hurt for you sometimes, but only because you’ve disappointed me so much. I thought I knew who you were, but it was a lie.”

“No! It wasn’t a lie! I love you.”

“If love is punching me, throwing me around and holding a gun to me while you rape me, then I guess you do, but that’s not my kind of love.”

With those words, his eyes hardened, his fists clenched, and she was no longer tempted to remain, though her body of its own accord, had frozen her to the spot.

The car door slammed behind her and Jace appeared at her side flexing his Marine Corp build and radiating rage. “Go back to the car, Renae, I’ll get your things.”

She nodded, taking a tentative step backwards, until the heat and light of the summer afternoon jarred her into action. She turned and, without looking back, made a beeline for the car, where she collapsed sobbing in the passenger seat. “Pull yourself together, Renae. Jace is alone in there.” She gave her face a gentle slap. The dread that lived in her chest was deepening to alarm and, terror, spurring her into action.

She took a breath and wiped her face with her shirt and reached for her phone. She wasn’t sure who she would call, but she didn’t have to figure it out. Jace was already opening the door and throwing her bag in the back. He sat in the driver’s seat and without a word, started the car and backed down the driveway.

“What happened?” she asked as they turned off the residential street into the downtown traffic rush.

Jace sighed. “I’m not proud, but he was there with his stupid face, and I thought about how the police treated you last night, and how he’ll probably never pay for what he did, and the fact that he would just keep harassing you, so I pulled him off the couch, threw him against the wall and bashed his head against it several times.”

“You did?” An emotion she couldn’t identify washed through her. Was it fear, relief, disgust, or a mixture of all three?

“I did. And then I told him that if he ever so much as walked on the same block as you, I would fucking kill him and reminded him that I was trained for exactly that.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I probably should have had a bit more control, but no one fucks with my family.”

“I know.”

“Listen, I think you should come back up north with me for a while. I’m not sure you’re safe here.”

“I’m not leaving.”

Jace shrugged, unsure what to do. Renae might seem like a baby to him, but she was 21 and legally able to decide for herself. What could he say?

Some moments define you, and looking back, Jace would wish he had tried harder. This was the moment that would come to haunt him, just as the rape and abuse would forever traumatize Renae. Or, at least, it would have, had she survived the next two weeks.

She Got Up

She got up for the hundredth time, attempting to shake the tendrils of exhaustion from her head. Instead, in her weakness, she was overcome with dizziness and was forced to resort to holding the bedpost to remain upright. She walked the house at zombie speed, just to prove she still could and returned to her bed, aching madly. The days passed in kind, a relentless parade of pain and regret.

She got up for the last time, shuffling one tentative foot in front of the other. The ennui welled inside her like a tsunami about to break, but she bit it back, only just in time. The effort, however, tangled her feet beneath her, and the last thing she saw was the floor speeding toward her face. With a sickening crunch, she was released from her prison forevermore, her last breath a sign of relief.

The Sweetness

Do you remember the day we sat together on the front stoop, eating orange popsicles in the rain? You held my hand and I kissed your cheek, my lips sticking for a moment in the sugary film. I licked them, afterwards, lingering in the orange tang and reveling in the innocence of your smile. It’s still my favorite day because it was the day I learned who you were.

We were only four years old, brought together by my grandmother’s willingness to unburden our overworked mothers from time to time. Do you remember how we played mother-may-I in the yard and made a grown up home under the old oak tree? We whispered and shouted, imagined and imitated, like only a couple of four-year-olds could do.

And then, the unthinkable, as we sat on the stoop on that fateful summer day. Mr. Harfinkle’s dog got loose and ran straight for us. Do you remember? He was such a mean old man and his dog was vicious. I screamed and scrambled, trying to find my footing, but I somehow slipped, barreling down the steps, straight towards the galloping creature.

It amazes me now, the clarity my barely-formed brain could reach. It was merely a split second, but my little lifetime projected before me in an heartbeat. Even at four years old, I was acutely aware of my mortality in some instinctual, automatic way. I can recall that exact moment, more clearly than any other in my life thus far. To this day it defines me, just like your actions in that same moment will define you forever in my mind.

How you managed it, I’ll never know, but you arrested my fall barely in time to keep the dog’s jaws from closing on my throat. One moment I was flying into certain death, orange drops of popsicle melding with the rain around me, and the next I was behind you.

You stood eye to eye with the dog and it growled a deep beart-stopping growl, but it didn’t move. Somehow, your little four-year-old ferocity backed the dog down long enough for Mr. Harfinkle to arrive, spitting bile at us like a couple of four-year-olds were responsible for all of the disappointments in his life. You stared him down too, until he stammered and backed away, pulling the dog by its collar.

My little heart was beating with the pounding rain, as fear dissipated and love flooded in, both tattooing it indelibly forever. So much has happened since that day. I lost you when the adults in our lives moved in different directions and found you again, right when I needed you. As a child, I loved you, but as adults we fell in love. Not infatuation, but real, deeply-rooted love, with all of its trappings.

We’ve lived a lifetime of happiness and sadness, children and grandchildren, fear and safety… All of it made possible on the day you saved me from certain death. Now I sit and hold your hand, waiting for the moment you’ll open your eyes for one last goodbye. When you do, I’ll kiss your cheek, allowing my lips to linger in the sweetness.

Close to Your Heart

Source (Picture of an ornate locket on an open book)

Brett’s face was turned toward me with a plaintive look, but I was lost in thought and hadn’t heard the question. Or maybe it was something else. I looked down at my feet, marveling at their smallness, and wondering how they could possibly hold up the rest of my body. I felt awed by all of the little muscles and impulses and bones that made them work. What would the bones look like without everything else?

“Dylan…”

“Huh?”

“What was that? What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing. C’mon.”

“Ok. Do you think when I die, and my body decomposes, I’ll be able to feel it somehow?”

“I don’t think you’ll be with your body, Dyl. I think you’ll be someplace else.”

“But what if like, my brain takes longer to die, and I end up trapped inside my decomposing body?”

“I don’t think so,” Brett said quietly, “but you could always be cremated.”

“Yeah. That’s a good idea.”

“It’s what you want, then?”

“I think so… Yeah. Yeah. Do it. Cremate me.”

“Ok. Where should I scatter your ashes?”

“I don’t know. I only want to be with you, you know?”

“I know, Love. I want to be with you too, but it seems we don’t get to choose this time.”

“Could you take some of my ashes and put them in a locket near your heart? That’s where I want to live.”

“I will, but you already live there.” He took my hand in his and brushed my fingers with his lips. “You have to know you always will.” Tears formed in his bright blue eyes, amplifying them in a way that melted my feeble heart. I squeezed his hand in return.

“You’ll go on. You’re still young. I want you to live and love and do all the things you haven’t been able to since I’ve been sick.” The tears flowed freely now, but I knew he wouldn’t lose control, not while I was still here. “Brett… I need you to promise.” He shook his head. “You have to. It’s the only way I’ll be at peace.”

He took a great gulp of air and swiped at the tears with his free hand. “I don’t know if I can. I think… I think I might fall apart without you.”

“Then fall apart, but only for a minute, ok. After that, promise me you’ll live your life and be happy.”

He nodded. “I’ll try.”

“No ‘try.’ You need to promise.”

“Ok. I promise.”

I knew he was lying, but I also knew he’d remember making the promise and try to keep his word. It was the best I could do. I felt so helpless to ease his pain. I pulled his hand up to my mouth, kissed it, and placed it under my cheek. “My final resting place, Brett’s heart. It’s better than heaven.”

He smiled slightly through his tears, and I closed my eyes to burn the memory into my heart.

The Heart Knows No Boundary

Source (picture of a person through frosted glass)

Because I wanted to touch your face, if only to feel the connection of your soul to mine… But I couldn’t. I could only stare at you from the other side of this frosted windowpane, and touch my hand to yours through the glass. My heart overflows with love, and yet I curse the fate which keeps us apart and the senses lost through human attrition. My heart overflows with love and maybe one day I’ll understand… The connection of our souls is not dependent on proximity. My heart overflows with love and I meet you somewhere in the beyond.

Your Fortress

Source (picture of a person walking near mist, shrouded buildings)

My heart slams against your walls time and time again, trailing to the floor in a battered heap of blood and tears. I hadn’t meant to get so close to your boundaries but how could I see them, when you’ve made them invisible? They stand like silent fortresses, shrouded in a mist of confusing words and signals.

So now, I lie, sobbing, in a heap of confused hopelessness and wondering if your inner battle will rage on forever. I thought I knew the answer, but I was wrong. I thought I knew you, but you were wrong.