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Short Stories




Cold-Eyed Triage Nurses In High-Heeled Boots by Angel Obregon Forced into a Lesbian encounter in the fitting room. [Rated R] [2,527 words]
The Way To Bet by Angel Obregon The horrible result of reading a book called The Pleasures of Probability by Richard Isaac. [1,035 words]
...And Everything Goes Black by Darcy K Metz A nightmarish story about a young man, two taxi drivers, and one unforgettable wom... [2,517 words]
The Winds Of Change by Darcy K Metz This is the first short story I wrote based on characters in a novel I tried writing when I... [7,246 words]
The Trouble With Carla by Darcy K Metz This story follows a previous one, "The Winds of Change." This story is more of a horror... [4,905 words]
A Jennifer Love-Affair by Darcy K Metz A completely false story of a treeplanter from Vancouver who meets and falls in love wit... [3,869 words]
The Wicked Witch Of Creative Writing
Dark Rebirth by Kerry L. Schofield Dark Rebirth is the story of a man named Senwick, who inherits on the death of his mysterious aged... [7,117 words]
Satan Smiled by Albert Davis - [3,737 words]
The Fourth Floor Landing by J. Michael Kearney A young firefighter recounts how a pompous Captain finally got his wish. [6,364 words]
Forever And Always by Virginia A. Sheppard A young woman is tormented by a decision she must make. Her four year old daughter lies help... [1,567 words]
Spring Break by Arlene Mason Another adventure for Keith Richardson, Private Investigator. This time his vacation is interupte... [4,784 words]
Hidden Reality by Lisamarie Jones Christina's lunch-break is not quite as it seems. [736 words]
Autumn Wind by Dorothy Getchell About an old man who must learn to deal with his wife's death. A very sad but moving story, if I m... [1,461 words]
Art Lovers by M J Martino A Guardian Angel's simple manipulation of fate allows two soulmates to meet for the very first, and ... [2,481 words]
There Be Dragons by Scott Jones A young couple on an afternoon jaunt get more than they bargained for. [1,809 words]
The Empty Bay by Alex Empire [461 words]
On The Other Side by Lisamarie Jones This is a story about a young girl who is tired of being pushed around. She takes matters int... [1,134 words]
The Witness by Thomas J Misuraca A Kafka-esque story in which a man finds himself and his loved ones in danger if he reveals informa... [2,244 words]
The Perfect Kiss by A Shockley A teenager wonders about the word "Love." She begins to believe that what she has heard about... [1,959 words]
The Running Man by Eric Allen Written for freshman English class, to explore the concept, meaning, and definition of heroism.... [1,091 words]
Come Back, Mr. Mojo Risin' by Noel Dolan Kennedy James lost her beloved brother in the Vietnam War. A year later she sees leg... [4,245 words]
God's Messenger by Tom Di Roma About the influence an elderly gentleman has on the patrons of the diner where he has been froz... [5,970 words]
The Good Gun by Russ Bauer A lone women prepares to leave a city falling into chaos. She also has to protect herself from som... [1,564 words]
A Day In Dell by Barbara Villarreal Old west setting... good vs evil. [1,969 words]
My Boy's Best Friend by Melissa Allen About a girl who can't stand her boyfriend's bestfriend and then one day she finds out she... [4,020 words]
Music To My Ear by Melissa Allen About a girl who cannot stand a guy and then she has to sing with him in her band and realizes ...
It's A Wonderful Life by Jennifer M Haynes The story of a man surviving (and wishing he hadn't) a nuclear war. What happened before ... [1,950 words]
The Jigsaw Puzzle by Jennifer M Haynes A teenager tries to free himself from the sickenly perfect town he lives in, to make it into ... [1,084 words]
A Teen's Diary Entry by Rachel Elaine Reeves A teenager writes a diary entry after driving drunk and killing four people. Her chilling... [295 words]
Sticks by Charmaine L. Glass With the help of an overweight classmate, an underweight girl finds her hidden courage to overcome teasi... [877 words]
Always With You, A Collection by Toni Jaquay Lynch Always With You - It's a story of undying love. [514 words] I Will Feel It - It's... [149 words]
The Big Bang by Darcy K Metz A short short about a man who meets himself. [196 words]
Escape To Samsun by J A Melody A tale of three comrades, chartering their epic path to freedom, and to escape the horror that... [2,450 words]
Haul Out The Holly by Jennifer L O'callaghan This is a holiday story I wrote for a writing class, inspired by what my sisters and I call... [2,087 words]
Warriors' Mired Blades by Daniel A. Souers A true medieval and inspiring masterpiece that brings the reader within the mind of a gr... [1,799 words]
Fake Reality by Erin D. Traynum Covers the thoughts and influences of a gold digger at the moment when she commits suicide. [1,034 words]
Through The Window by Erin D. Traynum This story is about a nine year old girl who is being sexually abused. [1,211 words]
Florence by G�rard Ducasse A rather banal love story. [762 words]
Deposit Three Billion Dollars For The Next Two Minutes by Angel Obregon This is the horrible result of watching 3 X-FILES re-run... [2,931 words]
Quarter Of A Century by Drexler McStyles This short story is an obscene tale of insanity and excessive drug use set in Las Vegas. [4,084 words, Rated R]
Destroy The Link by Jennifer M Haynes Story of a girl who comes home from school to find things are wrong, and then realizes that sh... [3,333 words]
Packed With Peanuts by Jennifer L O'callaghan This is a flash fiction piece I wrote for a writing class about an attempted late night sna... [731 words]
Bovinza by Duane A Wood/Caveman A 12 year old boy has a peculiar, reoccuring dream about, of all things, a cow. To discover its meaning... [898 words]
Shear Trouble by Addison Gast A short story. [514 words]
Blues In The Closet by Victoria King Angel Obregon submitted this for Victoria King who is operating without the Net in mor... [3,998 words]
Checkout Time by Louise Friedman It's a tale of too young, self destructive, certifiable girl who married a slug and allowed him t... [1,664 words]
A Quarrel In The Forest by Darcy K Metz An argument between a cedar tree and a stone resolves itself after much time. [161 words]
Remember The Bubbles by Dana Drew The story of an elderly man rekindling his youth with the help of a playful child. [623 words]
The Mistake by Kavan Tate drama of a boy's decision gone wrong [504 words]
Mike and Sadie Mae by Judith Z Marrs Short story. [4,038 words]
A Work of Art by Roy L Pickering Jr The tale of man who feels trapped in the merely serviceable existence he believes he has settled ... [3,944 words]
Elizabeth by Christine Dorothea-Maris A short mystery story about a widow, taken in by her late family's husband in the late 1890's, who ha... [255 words]
Home by Matt Matics This short story (or possible beginning to a longer piece) is ostensibly "about" a boy returning home from... [3,299 words]
Cold Wind by David H. Paniagua The short story of three soldiers who've deserted the battlefield of WWI, only to discover they've be... [1,345 words]
The Fortune Teller by Michael J McGrath A group of friends encounter a mysterious fortune teller who changes lives. [975 words]
Transition by Oliver Thomas Coles Brackenbury A man trapped between two great fears of the unknown, one which he has left behind and one which mus... [916 words]
Yasha Tafipolsky by S Lichtenstein A story of the Russian Revolution, its effect on the people, and the struggles of the Tafipols... [8,644 words]
Twenties by Larry D. Griffin Flash Fiction [668 words]
Tiki's Revenge by Edward L Wier A short-story of a lesser god's dwindling popularity in the spirit world. The Christians and t... [8,078 words]
Outlaws by M H Doty It is a irreverent piece about falling in lust in a beautiful tropical town with an outlaw-type guy! [2,500 words]
The Cake in His Pocket by M Betette A dark comedy about a very disfunctional and very happy family. [850 words]
Blue Dog Days by W Delaney This short story is about an ex-politician turned political writer named John Gerrick. The story ... [2,000 words]
The Doona Drag, A Collection by S Lichtenstein The Doona Drag - A humorous look at the plight of modern middle-aged man, coping w... [650 words]
The Girl in the Ocean by Edward D Adams Two women are dead and only one man cares about finding out who did it. In catching the ... [4,300 words, Mystery]
(Un)Faithful by P D Woo How do you forgive someone you love? What if you'd betrayed them before and they'd forgiven you? W... [1,050 words]
Leaving by Murray Evans Leaving home for not just a new country, but a new world. [4,050 words]
The Perfect Joke by J A Young A dark and funny slice of life detailing a boy's search for perfection. [1,800 word]
Bazaar by W I B R Smith This story was inspired (very) loosely by an incident which happened to me in college, back in 1991, whe... [5,500 words]
Age Before Beauty by Mary Ann Savage Women get bored and restless in some of these apartment complexes. Even old ladies. Let the g... [1,900 words]
Weeds by Mary Ann Savage This is not really about flowers, not really about love. [1,350 words]
Adult Bookstore by Sal Morano Experiencing frustration and stress, a reformed porno junkie comes face to face with the urge t... [4,500 words]
The Magic Ball
The Beast
Pfarfenagle
The Sheriff
The Alien
Vampires
Jealousy
Corrine and Victoria
Destiny
The Death Reader
Early One Morning
Lost Four Words
Lavender Moon
Sweet Angela
Iridescent Imagery
Christmas Shopping
It's Been There...
Burnt Out
Stolen
Tinfoil Memories
A Pang of Pity
The Way It Ends
Miss America
Don't Ask
Obsession
Tales from the Altar
Waves
In the Cards
Billy
Looking At Me
The Gift
Suspension of Disbelief
Bingo Blood
The Belief
Aunt Rose's Revenge
Lytle Creek Trek
Utter Untruths
Protect and Serve
The Figure
The Last Tenant
Into the Knight
Salugi at Starbucks
The Parent Hunt
The Last Laugh
Mother's Day
The Cop
The Red Eagle
The Grand Old Party
Lacy and the Bear
Locusts
Unconfessed Sins
Rules of Civil Procedure
Do Unto Others
A Stranger Dressed Black
Strike Force - The Reckoning
The Doorway
Coping
Sniper Hunt, A Collection
The Slayer
Some days you're the pigeon...

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TITLE (EDIT)
The Wicked Witch Of Creative Writing
DESCRIPTION
Non-fiction/fiction.
[1,418 words]
AUTHOR
Gary Donnelly
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Details to come...
[February 2000]
AUTHOR'S OTHER TITLES (1)
Halloween In Vietnam (Short Stories) Non-fiction/fiction. [1,649 words]
The Wicked Witch Of Creative Writing
Gary Donnelly


     No one really knew her first name. We just called her Miss Matika, my creative writing teacher in high school. She was a short, pudgy woman in her late thirties who always came to class in a large mustard-colored sweater, chalked-covered black pants and purple high-top sneakers. Everything about her clashed including her bleached-blond roots and thin black mustache. Think Fred Flinstone with a bad dye job and you�ll get the idea.
     It was a fairly small class consisting of no more than nine students who would form a circle at the end of each week and salivate at the thought of tearing each other�s stories apart.
     They were like ravenous wolves and she was their leader. I was more like the ugly duckling. I never really fit in with this bloodthirsty bunch. More reason to tear every one of my works to pieces.
     I think that was what Miss Matika enjoyed. To her, everything I wrote was disjoined, clich� or all together boring. I found this pretty funny coming from a person who dreamed of writing a novel about the secret lives of Catholic Nuns living in a religious commune. Their hopes, their fears, their daily trips to the altar to pray. What a concept.
     Ms. Matika, to put it in simple terms, was an oddity. Everything she did and said seemed to teeter on the line between reality and a total psychopathic state. One of her first recommendations to us in class was that we faithfully take up the ritual of eating scones and drinking earl grey tea every morning for breakfast. She said a writing mind without a little English culture in it, was no mind at all. That was fine with me though. She could drink tea and eat her nasty little pastries like Charles Dickens all she wanted, I'd stick to the McMuffins.
     You see, our dear English teacher favored those who kissed her ass. By this I mean that she favored the works of those who praised her writing accomplishments. It didn�t matter whether you were a decent writer or not. She was only interested in those who would listen tirelessly to her endless drivel and failed attempts at poetry.
     Matika was like a tyrant, a dictator who tried to brainwash her subjects and I�m sorry to say that she managed to create a few minions of her own. These guys, two to be exact, were her little pets. For purposes of anonymity and to protect the good name of their families I�ll refer to them as Tird 1 and Tird 2.
     Tird 1 was her favorite, an overbearing kiss-ass who made sure his lips were planted on Matika�s rear every chance he got. She called him �my brightest student�. I can tell you one thing. If there was anything bright about him it surely wasn�t the light on upstairs. His best piece of work was a two-paragraph piece on how he could fart on cue. Boy did that get laughs. It got an A too. I guess if I wrote some stories back then about gas exchange or 15 ways to pick my nose I�d be getting the same grades. I don�t know. Call me crazy but I try to write things with a little substance to them.
     Tird 2 was no better. He spent his days in class praising Matika�s poetry and trying to emulate it on paper. If you�re wondering what her poetry was like, I happened to keep one of them for use as scrap paper. It was called The Pigeon and it reads�

 
            I was walking through the park when a pigeon accosted me,
                Dismembering me with its eyes it asked me for a donut,
                I said I have only bread can�t you see
                It defecated and flew away,
                Leaving me with bread in hand and a hole in my soul
                Cursed pigeon.


Enough said.
     I made it clear to her one day in class that I didn�t like scones and I didn�t like the way she taught her class. I told her that I was in her class to learn how to write better and she just wasn�t doing her job. It was true that I wasn�t the best writer in the world but that was why I wanted to take the class.
     �A writer has to start somewhere and obviously this is not the place for me,� I told her.
     She glared at me for a moment and growled at me �Hark, peon�. if you do not find my writing superb then you will never be any kind of writer!�
     I responded by taking my book and throwing it out the window. When she saw my book, stuffed with all the useless photocopies of her foul writings, she screamed �Who do you think you are, Shakespeare? Get out�. Get out of my class!�
     I shook my head, picked up my bag and left. As I closed the classroom door behind me I heard one last howl � �You are no Shakespeare�I am Shakespeare�I am the God of this writing class!�
     You might be thinking that I�m bitter because I didn�t get a good grade in her class. Well, let me tell you this one last story and you can decide for yourself. You see, our high school decided to do something really cool the last year I was there. They started their own student magazine called �Voices�. I was really pumped to go and check this out because it sounded like the thing for me. I checked it out and to my unfortunate surprise, Matika was running the show. I had some real reservations about submitting the two stories I had written specifically for the magazine but I took a few deep breaths and showed them to her. I remember her reading them with a stupid grin on her face, wiping the scone crumbs from her ugly mustard sweater. When she was finished she laid them down on the desk and smiled at me. She told me that besides a few spelling errors the stories were great and she was going to put them in the magazine.
     I waited anxiously for three weeks until the magazine came out. I quickly flipped through the pages till I found my stories. At first glance they looked great. They took up a whole page. They weren�t my stories! She had taken out the words she deemed offensive like �damn� and replaced them with �gosh� and �golly�. My stories came out sounding like they were written by Mr. Rogers. What a bitch.
     As much as I hated my first creative writing experience, I have to say that Miss Matika did teach me a few things. She taught me that the first step to being a good writer was to believe that I could be a good writer. If I had listened to Miss Matika back in high school I wouldn�t have continued to work on my writing style and grown as a writer. Criticism is good, as long as that criticism can help you make your work better. I guess that�s one thing that Miss Matika, in all her infinite wisdom about writing, didn�t learn for herself.
      As bad a teacher as she was and as much as I should be able to forgot those horrible days under her tutelage I still have the occasional twisted fantasy about Miss Matika. I can picture her, undercover in some monastery in Europe dressed as a nun or a priest (she could swing both) spinning her web and snaring the unsuspecting nuns, playing them like puppets and turning their lives inside out. She�d coax them into revealing their hopes and dreams and then kick them in the ass as they were going out the door. When her novel was written she would escape the monastery in the dead of the night and head for the nearest publisher.
     Two years down the road she�d be penniless and using her story True Nuns to stoke the barrel fire in front of her cardboard box on some backstreet alley.
     I can just imagine myself walking by and her eyes lighting up.
     Oh my God, Gary! It�s me�Miss Matika. You think you could give me something to eat?�
   I�d stop and smile.
    �Well gosh golly gee Miss Matika, I�m fresh out of scones!�.

 

� 1997 Gary Donnelly

 

READER'S REVIEWS (6)
DISCLAIMER: STORYMANIA DOES NOT PROVIDE AND IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR REVIEWS. ALL REVIEWS ARE PROVIDED BY NON-ASSOCIATED VISITORS, REGARDLESS OF THE WAY THEY CALL THEMSELVES.

"Gary, I loved your story. I laughed and shared your feelings about the wicked witch. I'm glad you made it..." -- Nelly, Los Altos, Ca, Usa.
"So true for any of us who has had creativity monsters going against our creative endeavors...this story is a very good and funny exercise in exorcism. Well done." -- Joan.
"Some teachers have it hard. Not getting the gist of why a student wishes to succeed really puts them a mile apart from those enthusiastic predagogues. Mine simply started to ignore me...poor slob! Keep up the good work. Neptune" -- Neptune.
"HAHAHHAHA..... (wiping eyes) I love your writing style; so cynical, so wry, so .... interesting. " -- Wolfa.
"Well Gary,you've accomplished one thing for sure! I could not stop scrolling through,till finished! WOW very good! Brought back memories,your intreging style kept me glued in. Throughly enjoyable. " -- Edgar A. Joe, Rupert, Idaho, USA.
"I would agree with Ms. Mitaka. Your skills are rather remedial. You resort to foul language for emphasis and although you have a very conversational tone, constant usage of "You see,"s and the like make it seem as if your character is more arrogant than Matika. What is so bad about the nun idea? That was a weak arguement. You also speak in fragmented sentences and there are some rather glaring grammatical errors involving everything from spelling to commas to quotational issues. The worst part was the "I learned something anyway," conclusion. I am sorry to tell you, but that IS a rather cliched device." -- B, chicago, il, 60626.

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
© 1997 Gary Donnelly
STORYMANIA PUBLICATION DATE
February 2000
NUMBER OF TIMES TITLE VIEWED
2391
 

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