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Latest Stories

March 19, 2024
Fantasy Stories Wondering Monk

Just My Imagination

The alarm clock went off and started playing an awful tune. Tom opened his eyes and closed them back, squinting. He reopened one eye and stood up to stop the torture. The phone was on the desk, in the furthest spot from the bed. Although he changed his way of…
March 19, 2024
Science Fiction Stories Ocelotlzin

Earth Is Dead

Recording… It doesn't matter who I was; I probably lived a long time ago, and I am now just a voice someone added to the audio-visual records. What is essential is the recollection of events that lead to the current state. So, a little history needs to be…
March 08, 2024
Flash Fiction Benoit

Some Enchanted Evening

It was a rugby tackle with tears: Chrissy burst in, sobbing and babbling, hugging James. Her face was all wet, eyes wild. What…? My parents split up, Dad has moved in with his boyfriend and I cannot join them. I am shut out. I have lost my dad. Torrent of…
March 08, 2024
Horror Stories Marvel Chukwudi Pephel

In The Hands Of My Legs

The car pulled up in front of the large salon. The neon sign, that sexy broad thing, on the salon'sroof read "Mr. Gil's All-night Salon". The exhaust pipe of the car was pumping solid smoke, theswirls moving from the car and towards the salon.…
March 07, 2024
Mystery Stories Vanessa Leigh Giles

Casualty of Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Chapter 1 Until Death do us Part ‘Ring, ring!’. I answered the telephone and asked, “Hello, good evening. Who’s this? “Hello.” This is Dr. Smith from Red Cross hospital. “Is this Mr. Locke, John?”, he asked, hesitantly scratching his bald head. “Yes, doctor.…
March 07, 2024
Crime Stories Robert Pook

Bar Room Trigger

Another return journey on footpaths so familiar. He strides across each crack in each paving stone. Regular loose drain covers sidestepped. Mapping long ago mapped in Richard’s desolate mind. His pace hastened by the sight of the oncoming storm. Quickening…
March 04, 2024
Horror Stories Ano Chinemerem

Sanctity

Where should I begin? I could begin by telling you about this comely boy, whom every notable person around the streets agrees his smile could charm the bills off one. Between one smile, there was his goodness, his dreams and humanity—a little far ahead?— but…
March 04, 2024
Flash Fiction Emanuel Diaz

Et Mortui Partium

As Rafael stepped out into the rain, it wasn't the ordinary drops that fell from the sky. Instead, it was a storm of souls, each one taking the form of shimmering jewelry as it cascaded toward the ground. Rubies, diamonds, and sapphires twinkled amidst the…
February 29, 2024
Poetry Jing Li Ava

London

‘Am I in London?’ "I am." Where is Elizabeth? Happy living story All of your chapter Bounlance joy Please my heart Power hand Wise mind Our baby Vow vow Love all love Miss I miss Endless wonder Bring us together Love all love Miss I miss For everything My…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Rob Pook

Life Sentence of The Smith

Born nine months after his country won the World Cup.A child prodigy.Cast off at age twenty-four.Husband, father, emigree, away on the other side of the world.The blue-collar life.The dreams of success.The search for fulfillment.The long years of empty…
February 29, 2024
Mystery Stories Joshua Lowther

The Operator

Jason looked over to his right, his eyes barely able to focus themselves on the subject of his attention. His neck ached terribly from the strenuous movement. He was tired. The captain’s gaze came to rest on the rookie sonar operator sitting tense at his…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Salvatore Difalco

The Chute

At dusk, we left our unit with a soft pink bundle. I carried it through the wet streets and into the black woods. I said I’d take it all the way, the bundle, but that we had to drop it in together. My wife’s green eyes flashed. “Don’t make me do that.” I…

I know you will never believe me. I can hardly believe it myself. Naturally enough, I was first introduced to my parents at my birth over fifty years ago. The twist is I was reintroduced to my parents when I was fifty, but they were just twenty years old. Impossible, you say?

Mom and Dad met back in the day when they were undergraduates at Hogan College, a small liberal arts college here in town. They were immediately bound by an urgent chemistry, a hormonal gushing that could only mean --- love. Although their passion subsided over time, they cared for and respected each other for the rest of their lives.

When Mom and Dad were in their mid-fifties and I was grown and out the door, they decided to imbibe in a grandiose experiment. They wondered whether their initial overwhelming attraction to each other was genetically based or was a matter of circumstance. They both believed that if they met again in another life, they would be attracted to each other even if their environments were not identical to that from which they arose.

My parents found a genetic laboratory near Hogan College. They went to the laboratory and agreed to allow their genetic material to be used in a cloning experiment. They would be cloned in the laboratory and the babies would then be adopted-out to childless couples. Mom and Dad, however, required the laboratory to stipulate to one minor detail; that is, their clones would be adopted-out to separate parents who had attended Hogan College. Their aim was to create a circumstance when they would again have a chance of meeting as young adults, just as they had met as freshmen.

For the most part, Mom and Dad went on to live their time under an umbrella of love. They had one child who, if I may say so, turned out to be a remarkably attractive and talented woman. They were the best of parents to me. They tried to instill in me a sense of honor and honesty, and they supported me in all the decisions I made, right or wrong. To their end, I loved them and I knew all my life that they loved me.

Now, as all good storytellers say, we move forward in time to when I was in my early fifties. Mom and Dad were gone, I had two children, and, if I may say so, and as you can no doubt tell, I had a successful career as a writer.

Then came the literary knock on the door. In front of me stood a young couple, with scrubbed smiles, trendy clothes and the confidence of youth. They introduced themselves and the woman stated that she believed she was related to a person who had once owned my house. I invited them in, half-expecting an attempt to sell me a vacuum sweeper, but their story, it turned out, was our story.

Dan and Heidi told me that they had met as freshmen at Hogan College. A relationship grew out of their meeting, and soon they moved-in together. Dan interrupted Heidi to tell me that he loved Heidi which led to a back at you from Heidi---as though I didn’t know all along. Student life being student life, the couple needed money so they answered an ad for volunteers at a local genetics lab. If accepted, they would each earn five hundred dollars for donating their genetic material. But, lo and behold, after the initial testing, some ogre from the laboratory called to chastise them for attempting to commit fraud. It seems that the lab had cross-checked and already had their genetic material.

How could this be? We know, don’t we?

Dan and Heidi went to the lab and met with the geriatric genetic ogre. They asked him the names of the previous donors that matched their genetic material.

He replied via his nasal voice that, “Pursuant to the Federal Law of privacy, I am not permitted to tell you.”

Upon a closer review of the file, he did reflect on the obvious error which indicated that the material had been donated twenty years earlier.

Dan and Heidi excused themselves and huddled in the generic genetic hallway. Then, without warning, there surfaced a simmering, then simultaneously orgasmic “aha” moment. “Could it be…could it be”… that they were clones and not the biological children of their parents?

Dan and Heidi returned to the ogre’s office and did the only honorable thing. They bribed the ogre and he gave them the names and address.

That led them to knock on my door because I had moved into my parents’ house after they died. After the initial pleasantries, Dan and Heidi told me the story that I just told you. Before they finished, I knew the beginning of the story from a conversation I had with my mother many years before

When it was my turn to speak, I told Dan and Heidi the first part of this story.

We sat around in total disbelief. I was talking with the genetic twins of my parents and they to their genetic daughter who had not been born to them. Or, since Mom and Dad were the parents of the three of us, was I the sister of both Dan and Heidi? I started to feel like I was living the lyrics of that old country-western song, “I’m My Own Grandpa.”

After considerable discussion, we agreed that Mom and Dad had been right; regardless of being raised in different environments, there was an innate chemistry wandering about in the DNA of my parents’ that brought them to love and then brought the clones to love so many years later.

I wish that was the end of my story. “And they lived happily ever after.”  Seldom is it so.

In one conversation I had with Dan and Heidi, they asked me how our parents’ lives had ended. I questioned whether they really wanted to know because genetically it could be their fate. Both recognized the validity of my point and we left it at that.

We left it at that until a few weeks later when Heidi appeared and asked me to tell her about the last years. I hesitated to tell her, but she convinced me otherwise. The actuality is that Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease when he was fifty-five. From that point on, Mom’s life became the conscious nightmare of caring for a man day in and year out. The last four years of his life, if one may call it life, Dad didn’t recognize Mom. If Heidi and Dan made a life together, there was a fair possibility that Heidi would end up being alone for a very long time.

How does my story end? Did Heidi decide to stay in a long-term relationship with Dan and live happily ever after? I don’t know. I never talked to either of them after my talk with Heidi.

 

Biography

I am a retired attorney. I have five children and ten grandchildren keeping me busy. I enjoy writing, singing, ballroom dancing and golf. My favorite writer is Erma Bombeck. I am a male, but I write better as a female.

 

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