Worthing Flash

Emma Still Sings   Jesus loves the little children, Emma sang with fourteen other seven-year-olds in her Sunday School class back in 1969, her eyes lifted to the stained-glass sunlight that she thought so beautiful only God could have sent it directly to her. All the children of the world, she sang. Red and yellow, black and white, she sang. They are precious in his sight.             Emma knew she sang off-key, so she offered her song softly. She tried to believe that Jesus could hear her voice, feel her love, despite the many better voices floating heavenward. Sometimes, she only mouthed the words, her voice shadowed by her shyness. But she meant each syllable that crossed her lips.             Only one classmate sang as bad as Emma, but he didn’t know it. He thought everyone looked at him because he sang so wonderfully. He thought his volume and his classmates’...

by John Sheirer Daphne knew Kenneth wouldn’t want to go on without her after forty-three years of marriage. So when she got her terminal diagnosis, she poisoned his dinner. Daphne cradled Kenneth’s head as he lay on the dining room floor and breathed his last. She dialed, stroked his hair, and explained it all to the emergency operator. Just then, Kenneth’s hand, still strong as his life waned away, grabbed Daphne’s shoulder and drew her shocked face close to his. “You … did this?” Kenneth mumbled. “Yes,” Daphne replied. Kenneth spoke his last words as he pulled her into a final embrace: “Thank you.”    John was the first to enter the 100-word challenge within a few minutes of my request for stories .

  Trail Accident Report   Two unidentified hikers suffered only minor injuries (primarily to their pride) after they attempted to mount each other last weekend in a secluded area of Mount Washington. One partner’s bare buttocks and the other’s sneakered feet simultaneously encountered a mossy patch on a rock outcropping during the near consummation of the couple’s relationship. The pair slid five hundred feet down a steep, grassy incline before coming to rest in a patch of wild blueberries. Rangers reported that the couple plans to climb again next month and advised them to wear the proper clothing and footgear needed to attain their summit.        Tuition   Dave knew he failed that morning’s exam, and he hadn’t even started the research paper due that afternoon. He needed inspiration, encouragement, motivation. His roommate couldn’t help, also on the brink of flunking out. His professors would be annoyed that he waited this long to ...

Dylan was about to post a photo of his dog, Lenny, on Facebook when Lenny looked at the screen and said Dylan should use a different photo because Lenny didn’t like that one. Dylan told Lenny that this was the only pic he took during their morning hike. Lenny thought for a moment and told Dylan to post this one anyway because even a bad pic of Lenny was better than no pic at all. Dylan told Lenny that there’s no such thing as a bad pic of Lenny. Lenny nodded in agreement and they laughed and laughed and laughed. John Sheirer is an author and teacher from Massachusetts, USA. His latest book, “Stumbling Through Adulthood: Linked Stories,” won a Pinnacle Book Achievement Award and a New England Book Festival Award. Find him at JohnSheirer.com. 

            Twenty minutes into their first date, Lenny slowed the car at a yellow light, his foot patient on the brake.             “You could have made that light,” Sadie said from the passenger seat.             Lenny titled his head toward her. “Next time, use the gas pedal on that side.”             Sadie glanced down. “There is none.”             “That’s the point,” Lenny said.             Sadie casually slapped the back of her hand against his shoulder. “You,” she said.             When Lenny told that story at their fiftieth anniversary party, Sadie again said, “you.” But she didn’t slap his shoulder.  ...

My favourite birthday presents at age seven were a magnifying glass and a globe so big I could barely reach around it. I imagined scaling those bumpy peaks beneath my fingertips. As the birthday party wound down, my grandfather hobbled over.             “Can you find where we are?” he asked.             Grampa trained the magnifying glass on the spot where I held my finger. “             Ah-ha!” he said.             “What?” I asked, my head bumping his as we squinted through the magnifier.             He laughed. “I think you found the first place I twisted my ankle running the mountains when I was your age.” John Sheirer John Sheirer is an author and teacher from Massachusetts, USA. His latest book, “Stumb...

The minivan consumed interstate highway miles like a swarm of locust defoliating a forest. Little Eliza’s eyes darted to every surface she could see from her raised safety seat. “I spy with my little eye,” she said with all the anticipation a six-year-old could muster, “somethiiiinnnngggg … black!” “The cows?” Eliza’s twin brother Elliot shouted from his matching safety seat, pointing out the window. “No!” Eliza said. “Daddy’s glasses?” asked Eliza’s mother Donna, not taking her tiring, forty-something eyes from the road or her hands from the proper ten-and-two position on the steering wheel. “No!” Eliza said. “Is it inside the car or outside?” Eliza’s father Bud asked, cocking his head from the passenger seat. “Inside!” Eliza called out gleefully. “The back of the seat?” Elliot asked. “No!” Eliza answered. “Mommy’s underpants?” Bud called out. “Gross!” Elliot spurted. “No, silly Daddy!” Eliza shouted. The minivan flitted ...

Tough Enough During his week-long trip from Kansas to Colorado with his wife and teenaged son, Oscar let his beard grow in. That's why he looked so facially awkward on the trip. There's probably a support group somewhere for this condition: not-quite-a-beard. But you can only be in the support group for a few weeks before they give you a pat on the back and tell you that you're cured, and you have to go away because there are people out there with real problems. Oscar thought the whole beard thing would give him that tough, outdoorsy, Western look for his trip. But Oscar wasn't in Kansas any more. Looking tough was a little difficult on this particular trip because he has a pronounced fear of heights. So when the family hiked up six-inch-wide switchback trails on an exposed Rocky Mountain ridge at ten thousand feet, his son skipped along, head down and checking for cell phone service, and his wife floated like a ballerina across gaps in the trail over head-spin...