Jamie Hershberger

If you missed last week’s episode, you missed a great one. You can watch the replay here.

Jamie put her heart into today’s prompt, which is to use the following in your story:What are you eating? Enjoy, and make sure you reach out to her to let her know you want her to finish this story!

Joanie looked down at her plate. Several crumbs had fallen away from the graham cracker crust and formed what her mind saw as a smile face on the plain white porcelain, or what she assumed was porcelain—this was a swanky sort of place after all. Didn’t all swanky people eat off porcelain? Or was that only in the olden days?

Joanie had grown up with corel ware—dishes that were virtually indestructible, especially in the days before granite countertops became the default for the suburban set. As her mind took a walk down memory lane, re-living several occasions in which either she or her sister had managed to explode a corell plate in spectacular fashion, She continued to stare at the smattering of crumbs, longing to press her fingers into them. The keylime pie had been a delicious indulgence that hadn’t lasted quite long enough in the microscopic portion it had been served. 

“I could go for another slice,” a voice croaked from her left side, and Joanie looked up in surprise to meet the gaze of Mrs. Vanderpool, who hadn’t spoken a word to Joanie throughout any of the equally miserly courses the two had sat through together. Joanie had been seated on the end, leaving her with no other opportunity for conversation, and she and Mrs. Vanderpool had been placed immediately across from the perpetually drunk Olsens. Joanie looked across at them now, and saw only the same red-faced man, grinning at everything being said at the other end of the table, where those with good breeding or at least some potentiality for entertainment which overshadowed potential for embarrassment—had been sat, and his washed out blonde wife, who sat as still as she’d seemed to the entire evening, one arm hugging her body, the other a stand for a wine glass which she lifted with rhythmic regularity to her overly powdered face, sipping at it through lipstick that seemed intent to create an entirely new upper lip, this motion only interrupted by a lifting of the empty hand to wave away each offered course, not even bothering to look at the server with her heavily mascara-d vacant eyes. Joanie wasn’t sure if Mrs. Olsen saw her now, or if she had noticed Mrs. Vanderpool’s comment. As far as Joanie could tell, Mrs. Vanderpool hadn’t spoken a word to anyone since arriving at the estate two days previously, merely gesturing to everyone with shakes of the head and points of her walking stick. Her silence and refusal to join in the party’s hilarity had only been matched by that of the perpetually stoned Mrs. Olsen, and Joanie had actually wondered whom she would hear speak first. She wondered now if Mrs. Olsen would smile, were she to understood the nature of her victory.

“Oh, yes, the pie was very good,” Joanie stammered, and smiled at the plump and fashionably dressed matriarch.

“There was a time when the portions were bigger,” she said, lifting her considerable girth in a massive harumph, as if her substantial size were proof of what she’d said.

Jamie Hershberger enjoys writing shorts (short fiction) under the pen name, J. R. Nichols. She is the creator and curator of www.writingshorts.net and the editor of The Writing Shorts Newsletter.  Her flash fiction has won several contests and has been featured in two anthologies.

If you missed last week’s episode, you missed a great one. You can watch the replay here.

Jamie put her heart into today’s prompt, which is to use the following five words in your story: beat, craft, pass, undermine, woman.  Enjoy, and make sure you reach out to her to let her know you want her to finish this story!

“Not sure, but I think we can get five dollars a piece for ‘em,” Millie said, sucking her finger where it had touched the end of the glue gun.

“Gettin’ a blister?” Cora’s face was scrunched up the way it always did when she was worried.

“She’ll be alright,” I said. “You just put your head down and keep on workin’. These bows ain’t gonna put themselves together.”

But it was no use—Millie’s injury apparently warrented further inspection, and, as a result, a trip to the kitchen for a bit of aloe.

As the girls scurried off to do that, I heard the crunch of feet on gravel and looked up to see Mr. Frank coming up the drive. My insides made moaning protestations I could feel in my muscles and reflexively I gripped the staple gun I was holding a bit harder than I meant to, but I kept working and managed to keep my face stony as I greeted him.

“Fine day we’re having,” he said, looping his thumbs through the loops of his levis and turning to look up at the sky, as though I had asked him to produce a personalized weather report. I thought about telling him he ought to remove his aviators and get a real and right look at the beautiful sky but then decided not to bother. My staple gun misfired and I suppressed the urge to curse or to even make like I’d intended for things to go otherwise, instead casually setting down the gun and picking up the glue gun the girls had left behind.

My heart gave a bit of a panicked flutter as the girls came to mind but they’d retreated into the safety of the house and so, again, I remained passive, even as Mr. Frank came to the table where I worked and picked up the staple gun. I didn’t like having him so close to me, close enough I could tell his wife cared to spend enough of his hard earned money to buy the fancy fabric softener, close enough to smell the pipe tobacco he kept rolled and tucked into the chest pocket of his flannel.

I wished I could tell him to leave.

“Mommy, do we have any bandaids?” It was Cora’s voice. The two angel faces peered out at me from the slice in the screen I’d been meaning to replace. My eyes instinctively flicked to Mr. Frank, and his eyes were exactly where I knew they’d be, even though he’d tried to shield ‘em with those aviators. He wore the same, sickening smile he always put on whenever he saw my girls. 

“Go on back inside,” I said, as calmly as I could, though my mind was on Mr. Frank, looking for even a singular twitch of a muscle indicating intention to move and calculating who between us could reach that screen door faster, or if the staple gun could be put to some sort of good use after all, should it come to that.

“Where we keep the bandaids, though?” Cora insisted.

“Got some under my sink. In the little bathroom. Go on, now.”

I could breath again when the little faces retreated into the cool darkness of our home.

“Shouldn’t let ‘em undermine your authority like that,” Mr. Frank said, with a cluck of his tongue.

“You’re right,” I said, and made movements like I’d been just about to be wrapping up for the day and go inside. “I think I’ll go on in there and give ‘em a good beating.”

He barked out a dry laugh and swiped a finger across his eye. Stalling. Like I might invite him inside. But I’d put a beating on the table and not a luncheon, so he’d have to go on home to his woman and his coon hound.
I’d won this round.

“I’ll be seeing you,” he said.

I didn’t respond. I just reached up and pulled down hard on the cord to shut the garage door behind him.

That’s all for today!

Jamie Hershberger enjoys writing shorts (short fiction) under the pen name, J. R. Nichols. She is the creator and curator of www.writingshorts.net and the editor of The Writing Shorts Newsletter.  Her flash fiction has won several contests and has been featured in two anthologies.

If you missed last week’s episode, you missed a great one. You can watch the replay here.

Jamie put her heart into today’s prompt, which is to use the following five words in your story: resolution, explosion, compete, lifestyle, fever.  Enjoy, and make sure you reach out to her to let her know you want her to finish this story!

“I’ve got to test negative before they’ll let me return to work.” Gladys stood at the sink, stirring cream into a half dozen eggs, wondering if the bread had gone bad or if she was going to be able to serve toast to her guests.

“Are you going to tell them?” Clyde jerked his head to the right to indicate the guests asleep in the two spare bedrooms down the hallway.

“I told Sally. I figured, their her friends. If she wants to tell the rest of them, she can.”

“Quite a decision you’ve made,” Clyde sniffed.

“You tell them, then,” Gladys said, shrugging as she poured her eggs into the buttered pan. She began stirring them gently with the metal whisk, irritated that her plastic one had been dirtied the morning before and was not at hand for use, and that she had to whisk extra carefully to preserve the finish of her nonstick pan. The fact that it would only have taken her fifteen seconds to wash the plastic one was squashed in favor of holding a grudge against Sally’s friend, Barb, who’d been the one to dirty it while making the french toast the morning before. 

“Some soggy toast it was, too,” Gladys thought bitterly, remembering how the entirety of the household had raved about it.

“I think you ought to tell them,” Clyde said. “All of them. They deserve to know they’ve been exposed.”

“I’m asymptomatic,” Gladys said, whisking more furiously in spite of herself. She hated when her husband tried to tell her what to do. Still, she had to admit the idea of keeping such information from the guests in her house being a bad idea had merit. 

“I haven’t even spiked a fever.”

“You should tell them.”

“I’ll test again. I’ll keep testing until I get a negative.”

“That’s not a real solution, and you know it.”

The room fell into silence, save for the subtle hiss of the gas burner and the slight crackle of butter as the eggs neared completion. Grabbing a spatula from out of the drawer, Gladys gave a final scrape to the pan and plopped the eggs on a serving platter. They steamed. Gladys watched the vapors rise and thought about hopes and dreams and plans and how her life was but a vapor, and wished she had married someone who could understand those sorts of thoughts and could engage her on them. 

She reached for a plate and set it on top of the eggs to keep them hot as she checked the bread. Still good. She felt the stick of butter on the counter. 

Rock solid.

She cursed and popped the stick into the microwave.

“Bad idea,” Clyde offered, and Gladys bit her lip to keep from responding. She wanted to say she knew what she was doing, and that she microwaved butter all the time to butter his blasted breakfast every workday for the past twenty five years.

But she didn’t.

It was one for the “keeping my resolutions” column.

She flipped the stick after five seconds and gave it another five then smiled satisfactorily at the perfectly softened results. 

She popped four slices of bread into the toaster.

“Mind the settings,” Clyde offered from his seat.

Resolutions went out the window in an explosion of words.

“Why don’t you cook the breakfast?” She shrieked.

“Calm down,” Clyde said, rolling his eyes.

“Stop telling me what to do and I will,” Gladys snipped.

“Look, I just want you to do the right thing.”

“I’m not telling our guests my personal information just because you want me to!”

“What’s going on, guys?” A disheveled, slippered and peep-eyed Barb had scuffed silently into the room.

“Nothing,” Gladys said. 

“If you say so,” Clyde responded.

“Well, good morning,” Barb chirpped.

“And good morning to you, early bird!”

Gladys wanted to spit watching the two of them chatter about current events and tv shows. When the room fell silent, she considered filling it with what she really thought of Sally and her friends and Barbs french toast. Instead, she said,

“I’ve made some eggs.”

TIME IS UP! SEE YOU ON THE PODCAST!!!

Thank you for tuning in to watch me write live! Catch the Christian Indie Writers’ Podcast at 10am Eastern to see/hear me read this piece LIVE! See you there!!!

Jamie Hershberger enjoys writing shorts (short fiction) under the pen name, J. R. Nichols. She is the creator and curator of www.writingshorts.net and the editor of The Writing Shorts Newsletter.  Her flash fiction has won several contests and has been featured in two anthologies.

If you missed last week’s episode, you missed a great one. You can watch the replay here.

Jamie put her heart into today’s prompt, which is: That’s it…I Quit!.  Enjoy, and make sure you reach out to her to let her know you want her to finish this story!

“That’s it…I quit”

“No, Sheree! You can’t! We’re in the middle of ribfest and there’s no way we can handle this volume with only two servers on the floor. Please, have mercy!”

[Read more…] about Writing Sprints Inspiration: Jamie

If you missed last week’s episode, you missed a great one. You can watch the replay here.

As always, the ladies of the podcast created some great pieces of writing from this sprint prompt. Today’s Prompt: Changing of the seasons.  We really enjoyed Jamie’s take on the prompt, and we think you will as well! Enjoy, and make sure you reach out to her to let her know you want her to finish this story!

“This is just a season of your life. It will be over before you know it, and it will seem just like any other memory from your past—a mere blip on the timeline of your life.”

[Read more…] about Writing Sprints Inspiration: Jamie