Brooke Duran

by Brooke Duran ________________________________________ Four men once came to a damp location in the untroden woodland to fish. They set up their tent fair upon the summit of a pine-clothed point of divided rocks whence a sarsen could be made to hit through the brush and rotate past the trees to the lake under. On sweet-smelling hemlock tree branches they catnapped the nap of fruitless fishermen, for upon the lake one after the other the sun made them slothful and the rain made them unfortunately damp. To close they consumed the final bit of bacon and smoked and burned the final horrendous and brilliant hoecake. Instantly a slight man offered to stay and hold the camp while the residual three should go the Monty county miles to a farm for provisions. They looked at him grimly. "There's only one of you--the devil makes up a twin," they said in farewell spell, and faded down the slope in the seen track of an aloof bungalow. When it became nighttime and the hemlock trees...

She was one of those appealing and charismatic girls born, as if by a mistake of destiny, into a kinship of clerks. She had no gift, no prospects, no means of becoming recognized, tacit, loved or much less wedded by a man of prosperity and merit; and so, she let herself be wed to a unimportant bureaucrat at the Ministry of Education. She donned herself quite plainly since she had never been able to afford anything better, but she was as displeased as if she had once been so called well-to-do. Females do not belong to a status or grade; their attractiveness, beauty, and usual fascination take over the place of birth and family. Usual grace, inherent classiness and a rapid wittiness decide their place in the social order of things and make the daughters of commoners the equals of the most upheld ladies. She suffered unendingly, sensing that she was eligible to all the elegances and extravagances of life. She suffered because of the destitution of her living quarters as she gla...

I don't have any stories this week, but I recently started an art class. Today we worked on a drawing of a mythical kitten dragon (what that is if you can't tell). We were told that it is okay no matter what it ends up looking like in the end. Anything requires imagination and artists admire that!

It is safe for me to say, or rather admit to you that it has indeed been an awfully busy week, as far as my own personal free-writing time goes. You may remember my recent book publication of "Kiss me at Midnight" that retells the classic tale of Cinderella (what if she didn't even want to attend the ball?). That book I had great potential plans for being part of a book series of re-written fairy tales. That potential was hanging for some time. Admittedly, I did try to get a retelling of Sleeping Beauty and/or Rapunzel started in my free time, but all those ideas seemed empty. (Weren't they destined to marry the princes that they ended up marrying their whole life? I don't like that. I prefer fate playing a role in my stories.) That was when it struck me, rather I have my son, Nate to thank for helping me come up with an idea that I have no doubts will grow. He was wearing his blue sailor onesie that says "first mate" on it when I was looking at him the ...

Zion Jones is a police interrogator in Miami’s overburdened police department. He’s up to his eyeballs in paperwork and really doesn’t have time for another case, but when his best friend and fellow cop is shot in a burglary-gone-wrong, he’s willing to take on a few extra cases. The next interrogation was supposed to be routine: a murder, a suspect, a suspicious amount of transferred cash. But the moment he gets in the room, he knows something is wrong. This suspect isn’t scared. This suspect is laughing, and proceeds to tell Zion personal, too-intimate-to-be-hearsay details on cold case murders going back nearly a hundred years. It gets weirder: for reasons unknown, the digital recording came up blank, as if no conversation had taken place. Of course, everything Zion has to report is dismissed—it’s nonsense, nothing that can be proven, and it was just an attempt to mess with his head. Right? If that’s so, then why does Zion feel like someone’s watching him everywhere he goes, as if ju...

Sunlight found its way into the room, making up a white frame around the short dark curtain that only just shaded the window. The glow cascading around the shaded window reminded him of Morita’s black square. He breathed. Ali would have giggled mercilessly at this comical thought. He sat on the edge of the bed, perturbed about his plans. The box was in the living room, and he craved to go, to open it, and have a magic familiarity. He said he would cover all the mirrors in the house. He did not want this to be an instant to face bleak reality, but a time to run out of it. Should he change his wardrobe? He had pardoned himself from work today and had put on his relaxation wardrobe out of common custom. But was this suitable? Maybe. After all, most of their time as one had taken place on weekends and holidays, as if it were something to celebrate. He began his job by covering each mirror with painstaking maintenance. When he was finished, he brushed the settee Ali had loved to sit on. He ...

Hey, my name is Bradley Steven Humperdink, I am sort of the prince charming character of this story without being a prince. Weird, right? I was born and raised in the middle of a broken land, a divided kingdom. My job was to be a cook at the bakery, even though I was horrible at baking foods. In school I had to study biographies of princesses like Cinderella and Snow White. When I was in the middle of my studies, I noticed something, the climax was always at midnight. Then a quick question came across my mind, “Why does it always have to be midnight?” but then, I graduated from school, got a job, so I forgot that when I was in school, I asked the simple question, As I grew older, I became the hero of everything, and it was just because I was quarterback of the football team. I was also a girl magnet, so I had a girlfriend. Her name was Cindy Samantha Jensen. She was way too clingy to me. She was with me all the time! She also talked to me about marriage all the time as if she wanted...