5 Short Stories

Mark fainted in the hallway. While falling he cut his wrist on a vent. He woke to see the blood and shut his eyes again, only slower this time.

To please her ever-sickening husband, Millie made him French Toast-his favorite dish-every single day. Secret ingredient: good vanilla. Actual secret ingredient: motor oil.

George returned late from work. He parked in the garage and closed it. He shut his eyes only for a moment and slowly breathed in the fumes.

Evelynn collected many books. She could not walk through her house. Trying to reach the kitchen she bumped a stack, which toppled. She laid there, calling out in vain.

Jason was cutting a pear. It dripped from the counter. He bent over to clean it up, slipped on the moisture. Skewered, bleeding, he thought, "I don't even like pears..."

I had a difficult time deciding what I could use as a theme for my stories. I had a lot of good ideas but none of them went together, there was no order. Finally, I heard a story on the news about an accidental death of a woman and then I had the idea for “slow deaths at home”.  The ideas took a while to formulate and the way to write them took even longer, but I was very careful about how it was done. I tried to never reveal too much or give the story away too early. That was something that I appreciated about the short stories that we read previously- they were never too revealing and often required some inference out of the reader.

As far as the pictures go, I wanted them to take place moments before the death of each person. Each photo takes place in a moment where there is still a slight chance for each person to live, but death ultimately appears imminent. Once again I made a decision to not show faces, except for one simply because the face was too good to pass up. But that was a last minute decision that had not been previously planned on. Reason? It was totally genuine. My gracious friend was completely exhausted and I felt I need to capture that.

I created four of my stories, but one of them was inspired by something I had seen on television and been absolutely disgusted by so I decided to use it. I had seen a television show all about the addiction of hoarding and saw one where I woman had been trapped under some boxes and never was able to free herself. Since she kept mostly to herself no one ever came looking for her and she died under the boxes. I decided to do the same, only with books because the girl in my photo reads about 100 books a year and I just felt like warning her.

Similarly, four of my stories are accidental death and one is a murder. I actually didn’t choose beforehand to do it that way, that’s just the way the story played out when I wrote it. I think I liked it the best it was a surprise even to me. I had intended for this man to make the French Toast himself and accidentally poison himself, but eventually his wife just showed up in my mind to finish the job herself.  I think it works in the series of stories though, because amongst the surprises, I think it is the biggest.