Authors join together to support anti-bullying efforts with their words. Each has chosen one of three prompts and created a short story for your enjoyment.
1. You’re alone in your home and you keep hearing someone call out your name. What do you do?
2. Walking through an art gallery you come across a painting of yourself as a child, but it was painted more than 100 years ago.
How is this possible?
3. Driving on a dark, deserted road, your car breaks down, there is no cell service. A guy stops and offers you a ride. Do you take it?
Annalise is as brave as they come. That is until she gets stranded on a back road in an area that is ripe with culture-clash. Dennis is there to offer assistance if she can get a grip on her assumptions. Robbie’s arrival makes the challenge harder. Opposite of Dennis in every way, he calls to mind, a different set of judgments.
Accepting help from either man is a risk that will undoubtably offend the other— the only possible witness if things go wrong.
~~ Excerpt ~~
Headlights. A car came towards her. Help…or…uhh…not help… The vehicle rounded the curve, slowed as it passed her and kept going.
“Wow.” She added ‘rude’ to her previous list of snobbish things to think about people who lived on Marriottsville Road.
Now, she really had to pee. “Oh god. This is terrible.” She rocked back and forth. Remembering her bladder put it into overdrive. Her options: none.
She opened the door an inch and listened. Nothing scurried, nothing charged. She opened it all the way and waited, just to be sure. Then, still clutching her phone she sprinted to the passenger side. When nothing jumped out at her, she held the phone in her teeth, yanked down her jeans and panties and tried to make the pee happen as fast as possible.
Relieving herself helped. She was outside the car and nothing happened. Now, she could put her overactive imagination to bed and think. She checked her cell. Still dead.
The rustle of leaves and the snap of a twig made her hop on the hood, then the roof, petrified. A fox, a possum, a rabbit…something she wanted no part of crossed the road.
That’s where she was when the second set of headlights landed on her. The car came from behind, slowing to a crawl when her hazards came into view. She hovered on her hood like a wide-eyed animal as the driver stopped alongside her, studied her a moment and drifted ahead. It was a man. Of course, it was. Smart people a.k.a. women, don’t drive on Marriottsville Road after dark. He pulled his car off the road and parked.
Novelist, Reviewer, Content Editor, Blogger, T-shirt Wearer, and Professional Snacker; Tracy A. Ball is a native Baltimorean and a veteran West Virginian whose family is blended from three cultures. She has opened her home to foster children, drug addicts, AIDS victims and anyone who needed an assist. She knows people who have committed murder and people who have dined with the Pope.
Which is why she writes sweet stories about tough love…and takes naps.