Category: Prose

Alice wandered through the weeds crediting strange flowers as a source of strength. Regardless, and in spite of appearances, she also trusted that miraculous Light she had grown to long for Who guided her with His caressing warmth and His disciplining heart every time she strayed.

Given all the detours and deceptions she had entertained, as she approached her journey’s end she wondered how she would be received. Would anyone be there to greet her whom she knew over the years? How many allowed themselves to be caught in the quicksand having grown faint along the way?

When Alice finally arrived she found everyone she could now remember waiting for her rejoicing that even she, indeed miraculously even they, made it home.

______

Denise offers the prompt word “faint” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Isaiah 40:31
But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Stan entered a used bookstore offering the antique dreams of the late 20th century. Since he remembered the late 20th century he could see his younger self admiring, like Alice chasing the White Rabbit, many of the titles when they were newer, but he wondered why anyone would now.

As he walked the aisles he paused at the Philosophy section bookended between Marxism and New Age Metaphysics like a triple engagement leading to a bizarre wedding. He wondered why philosophy would want to be associated with those wacky mistresses, but then it occurred to him, in spite of his own wacky fascination with it, that that was right where it belonged.

Stan wondered if the best way to keep the Lord from laughing at him was to only fall down those narrow rabbit holes that the Lord Himself offered. Then he could rejoice in the Lord’s wide mercy to quickly catch him rather than let him make a mess of things first.

______

Denise offers the prompt word “engagement” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Colossians 2:8 KJV
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

Gloria listened to a girl telling her about Jesus in the nursing home. The girl reminded her of her daughter when her daughter was much, much younger and acted more like an angel than Gloria liked to remember her daughter acting today.

The girl told the staff that she was sent there to visit only those nearest the ends of their lives and so a nursing assistant escorted her to Gloria who could no longer speak, but acknowledged others by moving her fingers. Although Gloria repeatedly rejected her own daughter, the girl’s words moved Gloria to lift her hand which the girl held in hers.

The next morning Gloria died and her daughter stopped by to pick up her belongings. Upon hearing of her mother’s last visitor, the dam safeguarding decades of tears collapsed.

______

Denise offers the prompt word “lift” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

While Daniel walked the loop around the pond he said to himself, When you see that the voice is not your own and you start doing what ‘it’ tells you to do, even when you know you’ll look stupid if you do, things start happening.

After some steps he continued, When the light finally turns on, you are shocked to realize that this ‘it’ was a ‘he’ all along.

Later, halfway through the loop, Daniel said, Then the ‘he’ gets capitalized and you’re in a relationship you would have thought was nutty only a few years ago.

Then Daniel, feeling he needed to answer some fictional objector walking by his side, said, Of course, there are those who’d claim that they could easily explain all of this away as simply me talking to myself, but it’s also not that hard to come up with explanations that explain away why they like to explain away stuff.

Daniel then addressed a more aggressive, but still fictional, manipulator by asserting, To those who insist I cast Him out as if He were some demon or go to a hell of their own choosing…well, I have no intention of doing either.

By this time Daniel was back at his condo where he paused to conclude, When worry becomes synonymous with silliness and there’s a river of joy waiting to overflow where ever you go, whatever you need will be given to you.

______

Denise offers the prompt word “light” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Story.

Since I didn’t know where I was going and since AI serves double duty not only as fiction but also as useful fiction, I put the address of the Six Sentence Story Café and Bistro into my phone while walking along the busy street. All I knew was the café was supposed to be somewhere in the area.

The voice coming from my phone told me to turn right so I entered the quieter side street, passed a cobbler shop and then a seamstress storefront which specialized in wedding dresses. As I continued walking I wondered if the software had any better idea than I did where the café was, but then I saw the three granite steps and Nick who let me in. Once inside I could smell Tom‘s cooking and there was Denise at the bar with Mimi while Chris and Clark sat at a table near the stage.

It was a wonderful place with wonderful people something my phone would never be able to appreciate although it did have enough fictional brains to show me how to get there.

______

Denise offers the prompt word “double” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

This is my second story for the prompt, motivated by Clark who gave me a good description of the Six Sentence Story Café & Bistro which I am mostly repeating.

Brian opened his eyes to the realization that reality wasn’t rational. True premises prophesying his doom like a curse of double double toil and trouble ran into the miraculous which flooded him with undeserved blessings that falsified the dreadful, but supposedly necessary, conclusions.

Although fond of a rational-enough universe that he could manipulate, what bothered Brian was that he didn’t know Whom to thank for the unexpected change of outcome. Who kept evil from winning when it held all the tarot cards in its hand as Brian failed to find solid ground in karma’s quicksand?

The problem may simply have been that Brian hadn’t completely awaken from his dreams which undermined a rational reality. But the miracle did occur and the prophesies over his life were voided and that left Brian overwhelmed with rejoicing.

______

Denise offers the prompt word “double” for this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Like most of us Jerry believed in neither gods nor demons. Nonetheless, he had no more than a grain of sanity planted in that noodle of his since he kept insisting we were computer simulations. I’d ask him, what did he think we were simulations OF anyway, to smack some sense into him, but it didn’t work.

Eventually something did happen to Jerry (not my doing, mind you), that caused him to start following Jesus, of all people, especially since just the day before he was talking that simulation nonsense.

Jerry spent the last year blooming like a goofy, exotic flower which truly amused us. I’d remind him, though, on occasion, that by his own assessment he wasted most of his life since he “repented” of nearly all of it (including the simulation stuff), but all he could say was that he wondered when I would stop wasting mine.

______

Denise offers the prompt word “grain” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

As he prepared a nasty response to some nonsense, Steve heard the Voice.

Don’t let demons run your mouth for you.

“Yeah, but the level of this nonsense is really nonsensical,” Steve thought so only the Voice could hear him.

You were worse than he is now a few years ago.

“Yeah, but this guy really annoys me,” Steve thought.

When Steve’s heart remembered that, indeed, he was worse, he smiled and then laughed and then, because kindness is a blessing even the nonsensical understand, there were soon two mouths laughing.

______

Denise offers the prompt “level” for this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Steve’s faith was the only tonic he needed.

When times were peaceful, he harvested peace. When times were less than peaceful, he sowed the choicest seeds of peace he had hoping for a hundred-fold harvest. When times were joyful he laughed with gratitude. Indeed, some thought he laughed too much, because—face it—nothing was all that good.

When all hell broke loose, as most everyone believed it would sooner or later, Steve didn’t notice.

______

Denise offers the prompt word “tonic” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.