31 Words from Jan 2007

Can you write a story in 31 words?

#1.
I don’t rightly know when they’re coming. They slam in on me at most inconvenient times. Voices, lots of them, inside my head. Today? Silence. Everyone is safe. I’m not cold.

#2.
Laymon wants us to get married. The baby’s due in June, he wants to give it a name like Cletus Wayne. I want to graduate cosmetology school, open my own salon.

#3.
We lost my little brother Jimmy for three days last fall when he checked into the Farm Rest Motel instead of sitting there on Daddy Bill’s deer stand in the rain.

#4.
He’s got two boys from his first marriage. One’s serving five years for armed robbery, the other married Linda Speck and they have four kids under the age of five.

#5.
That’s here, there. Her son Ronnie joined ROTC in high school, freshman year, then followed LBJ to Vietnam. His picture’s on the coffee table, his name’s on a wall in DC.