Cafe Aphra: An Online Community for Writers

He didn’t beg as she walked away. She’d expected he would, especially after the past six months of heart-shaped chocolates and beagle puppy eyes. She cleansed herself with a deep breath, blowing a warm fog over the chilly glass to obscure her view of the station and of him. He would stand there, the bouquet and ring she had refused in his trembling, anxious palm, until the train had slithered its way around the bend and out of sight. There was no need to witness it. She relaxed back into her seat as the conductor announced their departure. Here, anonymous amongst strangers, there were no expectations. She could finally breathe again, and was sublimely alone. The train slid forward. When she was sure he was out of sight, she wiped away the film of moisture from the glass. Raindrops littered the frigid pane, running down the window diagonally in a predetermined path. Several more droplets followed, careful to keep to the path of the first. The drops merged on their way, creating more pow...

Cold rain pelted the pond and rickety wooden pier, fewer than a hundred feet from where she worked the shovel.  Despite the rain, she continued digging the grave beneath the tree where she had so often read when the weather was nice.  She wanted it to be deep enough that other animals would not desecrate Rusty’s final resting spot.  With a trembling hand, blurred vision, and mucus running into her mouth, she had put him down that morning.  Rusty had smelled, despite repeated baths; the stench of old dog and pending death clinging like flies to a horse’s eyes. Before that, he’d slowed down, of course, growing mellow, docile, and constant - a silent partner in an equation that often included coffee and a good book.  Her naturally cold feet had been warmed with his constant presence at the foot of her bed, and lightning, which had always troubled her, was made bearable on many an October eve. Even earlier, Rusty had consoled her when her husband left, l...

  She dropped the wine bottle and screamed. The large kitchen echoed for a moment from the double waves of sound. Then silence fell again in this temple of shiny surfaces, latest gadgets, and that massive stove he had insisted on getting.      “Think of all the parties we’ll give, darling,” he had drawled and then left her to deal with the grunting moving men.      Now the pure white floor tiles at her feet looked like an abstract painting. She put out one bare foot and pressed down, at first gingerly and then with deep-seated self-loathing as the glass shards cut into her pedicure perfect foot.       The second foot followed. The pain was shooting up her legs from her feet. And she felt for the first time in weeks alive, present in her own body. After the one scream, not even a whimper came from between her clenched jaws. Her eyes were unfocused as her whole being turned inward to the pain.   ...

Words are small, written or spoken, their curve is lost in growing shadow, they do not carry like they would in the vitreous clarity of forgotten days, but loft and founder somewhere in their search for the one that will listen. Birds carry the clues to our song so high above us where stars bend in behind the parchment of blue turning their chorus of cold fire in response. The uncut grass harbors shimmering silk, these cold nights the spiders climb down into the pasture’s tiny hearts, spinning their stories to an audience of stone; their weightless moorings stream like silver banners unnoticed in the sinking season. by Seth Grube

‘He’s bought a London bus’. ‘How d’ya know? And I’ll have those two bath buns, make a nice change for their tea’. ‘She was in here, buying her bread.’ Monica pulled the string tight around the cake box. The red and green ribbon frayed out at the ends. She has a manicure every week, more often in the summer. ‘One of those big red ones?’ ‘Yes. That’ll be one seventy.’ ‘Why?’ ‘She couldn’t say, just said he came back with it, last Wednesday, parked it up their front garden. Then she left with her two sliced white.’ It wasn’t far out of my way. Mum and Dad would be watching Ready Steady Cook, then the Weakest Link. The bus was there. It didn’t leave much of a gap between the gate and back door path. They’d have to watch for the bin men. The house was a drab looking semi. I don’t think anything had been done to the paintwork since they moved in, eight, no, ten years ago. Just after I left school. I do our every two years, but then I would, wouldn’t I. Our Simon got to know him first. A ma...