I am continuing with the Flash Fiction Story, THE SEVENTH CHANCE. I hope you enjoy it.
Bob-Ann stretched and yawned at the same time. She had not slept well. The memory of the broken glass she left on the floor by the entrance to their home, the fact that she hadn’t heard Amato come home, and her pounding headache caused her to sigh heavily. She unwrapped her body, twisted in the bedsheets, glanced at the watch near her bedstand, and decided to go back to sleep.
Amato entered the quiet house. The crystal glass crunched under his shoes. His body tensed.
Where is Bob-Ann? Is she hurt?
Flipping on the lights, he saw the room was in order except for the opened Cabinet and the glass on the floor, glimmering like stars.
He breathed a sigh of relief.
No thief.Now, where is she?
He walked down the hallway to their bedroom and stopped at the door. The chubby brown bundle lay partially covered with the downy feather comforter and one of her thick thighs hanging out.
Amato had seen Lila talking to her and thought nothing of it. A few minutes later, he glanced in Bob-Ann’s direction; he saw neither and assumed Bob-Ann was talking to someone else.
An hour later, he went to find her and bumped into Lila. She informed him she’d asked Bob-Ann to leave because he didn’t want her. Amato thought the red-headed woman who had been his friend since they were kids had lost her mind. He wanted to throttle her. She’d always wanted to marry him, but he had never desired to marry her. Bob-Ann owned his heart.
As Amato stood in the doorway to their bedroom, he imagined Bob-Ann’s conversation with Lila. She’d never learned how to love and accept herself. Taking off his shoes, he walked to the side of the bed and sat down on it.
Bob-Ann awoke at once.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Why are you here?” Bob-Ann asked, surprised.
“Have you forgotten you’re my wife, and we live here?”
I am continuing with a snippet from last week’s introduction of The Seventh Chance, a flash fiction I am developing from a compilation of stories that will be released sometime this year.
Bob-Ann stretched and yawned at the same time. She had not slept well. The memory of the broken glass she had left on the floor by the entrance into their home, the fact that she hadn’t heard Amato come home, and the pounding headache that she had caused her to sigh heavily. She unwrapped her body, twisted in the bedsheets, and glanced at the watch near her bedstand. She had flunked her last chance not to act like a speechless, bashful mouse. Her husband, Amato, always told her that what others thought of them was unimportant. But she hadn’t been able to accept his way of thinking. Their age difference made her doubtful, mistrustful, and jealous. She’d never believed he was offering her a future with him. Bob-Ann flung herself on the bed and thought about Amato’s longtime friend and schoolmate, Lila. When Bob-Ann first met Lila, she tried to befriend the woman, but Lila noticed her insecurities and used misconstrued truths to gnaw away at Bob-Ann’s confidence one brick at a time. Since their marriage, Lila promised her that Amato would leave her because Bob-Ann wasn’t his type. For the sixth time, Bob-Ann believed her. Lila sounded so convincing that Bob-Ann’s tears started flowing, and she left the party without telling Amato she was going. He had given her many chances to see the beautiful woman she was, but she failed every time. She mumbled, “There’s no such thing as a seventh chance.” Curling herself around her pillow, she covered herself with her feather down as she thought about the cruelty of others and her inability to fight back.
This is another work in progress. It belongs to a group of flash fiction pieces that I have written and will be available sometime this year.
The Seventh Chance
Anger boiled within Bob-Ann’s breasts. In her hand, the crystal glass engraved with his name, she threw like a professional pitcher across the room, and it across the room, and hit the silver doorknob. It splattered, and tiny splinters rained on the floor, but her anger was not yet appeased. She walked to the glass vitrine and reached for the matching crystal glass engraved with her name. Gripping it at the bottom, she threw it like she was pitching her first shutout. Afterward, she examined the little glass mountain piled up before the door.
“Strike out,” she mumbled.
She wouldn’t need those glasses anymore, and her heart hurt. Her future had taken a deplorable end, one she had been expecting for some time.
The anger dissipated as tears streamed from her eyes.
Turning, she walked down the hallway to what used to be their bedroom.
No use cleaning up the mess now. I have plenty of time to do that.
This is a Creative Non-Fiction Story that I am compiling in honor of Black History Month. The title: FREEDOM’S CALLING
Note: The speech, AIN’T I A WOMAN, given in 1851 in the state of Ohio, has been left in its original form.
Was there no mercy for a child who, unlike others, had been brought up in a home that had spoken a different language than English? Black skin and nappy hair that a fine-tooth comb couldn’t even go through, the child’s place was to listen and obey, but what if she didn’t understand?
Born in 1797 in upstate New York, the child had never known the torment she would endure at nine years of age after being separated from her family. If she had, she would have probably cursed the day she was born and died.
Purchased by a family who spoke no Dutch, the girl spoke no English. Her owners were infuriated at her lack of English and beat the language into her with rods and leather. She was not a human for them but an unruly, disobedient piece of property that did not understand and, therefore, could not follow orders. She became an It.
For It, lashings became a way of life; the beatings hurt and left intolerable bruises. But It found freedom in the God her masters sang about. Later, whenever they beat her, she would pray aloud, hoping the God she had come to faith in would rescue her from the torture. He did.
Sold to a tavern owner, she went to live in a bar and house of prostitution. The beatings stopped. But, here, she saw the cruelties against women and the ruthlessness of men. She discovered her voice, and it dawned on her that she was not an It but a woman, a human being.
Unfortunately, her owner sold her. Her respite in the bar only lasted one and a half years. The pause gave her time to refuel and strengthen herself for the unknown brutality that awaited her in the future. She was denied the right to marry the father of her firstborn child because a neighboring plantation owner owned him and opposed the marriage; due to the fact the newborn would not be his property, she had to marry a slave owned by her new master, an older man who impregnated her four times.
On July 4, 1827, New York issued its Emancipation Proclamation and freed all slaves. But, the woman who had endured so many hardships and maintained her toughness and faith in the good of humanity was already free. It had already started seeking to find her thirteen children––the children she had borne that were taken away and sold into slavery.
During the Great Spiritual Awakening, she had a life-changing experience that would change the way she lived and changed her name. This woman became a friend of the progressive Quakers; she spoke out for the Civil War, recruited black men to fight for the Union, worked in government refugee camps for freed slaves, and spoke out for women’s rights.
She made her most famous speech in 1851 at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. Let’s hear the address from the woman herself.
***
Ain’t I a woman
“Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter. I think that ’twixt the negroes of the South and the women in the North, all talking about rights, the white men, will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman!Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.”
***
Three days after Thanksgiving, on November 26, 1883, on a wintry, cold day in Michigan, this woman completed her mission at eighty-six years of age. She took flight. Isabella Baumfree, better known as Sojourner Truth, born and raised in slavery, died a free woman and Walked On!
This is a Creative Non-Fiction Story that I am compiling in honor of Black History Month. The title: FREEDOM’S CALLING
Note: The speech, AIN’T I A WOMAN, given in 1851 in the state of Ohio, has been left in its original form.
Was there no mercy for a child who, unlike others, had been brought up in a home that had spoken a different language than English? Black skin and nappy hair that a fine-tooth comb couldn’t even go through, the child’s place was to listen and obey, but what if she didn’t understand?
Born in 1797 in upstate New York, the child had never known the torment she would endure at nine years of age after being separated from her family. If she had, she would have probably cursed the day she was born and died.
Purchased by a family who spoke no Dutch, the girl spoke no English. Her owners were infuriated at her lack of English and beat the language into her with rods and leather. She was not a human for them but an unruly, disobedient piece of property that did not understand and, therefore, could not follow orders. She became an It.
For It, lashings became a way of life; the beatings hurt and left intolerable bruises. But It found freedom in the God her masters sang about. Later, whenever they beat her, she would pray aloud, hoping the God she had come to faith in would rescue her from the torture. He did.
Sold to a tavern owner, she went to live in a bar and house of prostitution. The beatings stopped. But, here, she saw the cruelties against women and the ruthlessness of men. She discovered her voice, and it dawned on her that she was not an It but a woman, a human being.
Unfortunately, her owner sold her. Her respite in the bar only lasted one and a half years. The pause gave her time to refuel and strengthen herself for the unknown brutality that awaited her in the future. She was denied the right to marry the father of her firstborn child because a neighboring plantation owner owned him and opposed the marriage; due to the fact the newborn would not be his property, she had to marry a slave owned by her new master, an older man who impregnated her four times.
On July 4, 1827, New York issued its Emancipation Proclamation and freed all slaves. But, the woman who had endured so many hardships and maintained her toughness and faith in the good of humanity was already free. It had already started seeking to find her thirteen children––the children she had borne that were taken away and sold into slavery.
During the Great Spiritual Awakening, she had a life-changing experience that would change the way she lived and changed her name. This woman became a friend of the progressive Quakers; she spoke out for the Civil War, recruited black men to fight for the Union, worked in government refugee camps for freed slaves, and spoke out for women’s rights.
She made her most famous speech in 1851 at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. Let’s hear the address from the woman herself.
***
Ain’t I a woman
“Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter. I think that ’twixt the negroes of the South and the women in the North, all talking about rights, the white men, will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman!Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.”
***
Three days after Thanksgiving, on November 26, 1883, on a wintry, cold day in Michigan, this woman completed her mission at eighty-six years of age. She took flight. Isabella Baumfree, better known as Sojourner Truth, born and raised in slavery, died a free woman and Walked On!
Here is a second excerpt from my upcoming novella.
Label.Me.Man
Ferro closed the door behind them and walked around the Bentley to the driver’s side. The dark-tinted glass panels that separated the front and back seats were closed, accommodating Gio’s often withdrawn nature. He sat back and sighed. His most precious treasure was seated beside him. Gio looked to his left. Jediah sat close to the door, gazing out the window. Pain flowed through his heart. Jediah filled his world with light, but her fear of him was an agitation he needed to learn how to deal with. Could he bear to let her go? He ached deeply for her to understand and commit to him and their marriage. “You don’t have to sit so far away from me.” “I’m fine.” “All right.” “Aren’t we going home?” Jediah asked, noticing that Ferro wasn’t driving in that direction. “No, we’re going to my office. I have to attend the negotiation.” “When does it end?” she asked, turning her head from the window to look at him. “I don’t know.” “Then it will be a long one.” “Probably, but don’t let it concern you.” “Could you take me home first? You have my word that I’ll never run away again.” “I want you to come with me.” “Why?” “Because I need you by my side,” Gio answered, his voice hardening. “Do you need or want me here because you don’t trust me?” Jediah replied. “Would I still have to go to the meeting if I agreed to the additional inclusion in our marital agreement to give you all the time you need?” Do you agree?” “Yes, I agree.” “That makes me happy, Jediah. I know I’m weird, but I’m not insane. I wouldn’t have chosen you if I didn’t think you could handle marriage to me. We’ll drop you off at our home, and I’ll have another car pick me up so I can return to my meeting.” Gioacchino leaned forward, opened the glass panel, and instructed Ferro regarding the change of plans. “Thank you,” Jediah said as Ferro moved to the right lane, which led to the interstate to take them home. “You’re welcome,” Gioacchino said, closing the glass panel between them and Ferro. He leaned toward her and kissed her cheek. “I love you,” he whispered in her ear, putting aside the formality between them. He reminisced about the romcom Jediah loved to watch. Practicing the scene that he had stored in his memory, he left his hiding place, bridging the distance, and turned her toward him. He pulled her to his chest and cradled her in his arms, pressing her head against him. Jediah’s body relaxed in his embrace. “I believe you,” Jediah turned and murmured, her mouth covered by his jacket. Surprised that his action seemed to calm her, he experienced a rare happy moment and planted kisses on her forehead, unaware of what his action meant to her.
I am finishing my Novella, which will be released between April 15 and May 5, 2025. It is Romantic Women’s fiction with bits of drama, suspense, humor, and sensuality.
Blurb:
Gioacchino Tarinni needed to figure out who or what he was. Born savant with Autism Spectrum Disorders that labeled him as unusually bright, he lacked any type of social, emotional, or spiritual graces that would qualify him as being human. He was peddled between medical offices and laboratories as doctors and scientists deciphered whether he could be considered as human. So far, he has failed in every experiment except for his friendship with his friend, manservant, and chauffeur, Ferro. Psychiatrists and Sociologists have yet to find out how that developed.
Seated with Ferro at a cafe, Gioacchino focuses on a woman engrossed in her tablet. He attempts to count the braids on her head while sitting at a table on the other side of the room, but her frequent head movements foil his efforts each time. Annoyed at her not keeping her head still, he gets up and goes to her table to command her not to move. However, the displeasure on her face at his interruption fascinates him, and in a moment of impulsive audacity, he proposes marriage instead.
Excerpt:
A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.
Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value.
She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.
—Proverbs 31:10–12
Gioacchino Tarinni’s speedometer hit 280 kmh on Interstate 3 heading to Frankfurt International Airport. Traffic was heavy. Approaching the exit leading to the departure terminal for Lufthansa, he drove into a sharp curve, his car leaning to the left on two wheels. His tires screeched, and Ferro, his long-time friend, manservant, and chauffeur, fell against his right shoulder. Gio skidded to the boardwalk of the Lufthansa’s check-in for outbound flights going to London Heathrow and stopped the car abruptly. Leaving the engine running, he jumped out, commanding Ferro to get behind the steering wheel and to remain near so he could spot him when he returned with Jediah.
The only thing that mattered to Gioacchino was stopping his wife. She would always be his utmost concern. Six months of marriage had taught him that she could be stubborn if she wanted to. When she tried to leave him the first time, he’d resorted to drastic measures and called the chairman of the board of directors at the airport. The plane take-off was delayed. Gioacchino had entered the first-class section and saw the brown, velvet pieces of cloth knitted together and sitting quietly, waiting for the plane to close its doors so it could move to the runway. Her eyes met his, and she stood up without a word and walked to him with her brown, velvety arms flapping like bird wings.
He had desired to reach out, take those dark pieces of cloth in his arms, and hold them close to his heart as he did at home, but he didn’t want to create a disturbance. So he put his hand gently around her luscious waist and let his fingers feel her softness as he led her out of the plane.
The stewardess looked frightened, but Jediah told her she had nothing to fear, that her husband’s mental processes had failed to register that she had planned to take a trip. Gioacchino snorted. That was a lie. A savant autistic whose intelligence had been measured at 220 in mathematics and aerodynamics and 125 in all other areas of the autism scale, he didn’t understand people at all. But Jediah was an exception. He needed her to help him break out of the mold that characterized him as a robot incapable of relating to others emotionally, socially, sexually, and spiritually. According to tests taken in these areas, he had zeroed out completely. For Gioacchino, Jediah had lied, and a lie was a lie. There was no such thing as strategic lying based on diplomacy. His doctors labeled him a robot born with human skin and a strong heart that beat to keep him alive.
My lover is like a swift gazelle or a young stag. Look! there he is behind the wall, looking through the window, peering into the room. (Songs of Songs 2:9 New Living Translation, NLT)
Janie B sat behind the steering wheel of Paolo Di Salva’s Aston Marting and gazed down at what was once an old, dilapidated mill by a lake. Over the past twelve months, Paolo, her savior, had it remodeled for them. He’d left instructions for her to drive to the newly renovated late house and wait for him. He hadn’t informed her why, but she already knew the unspoken reason. He was going to guide her through her final therapeutic steps of deliverance into freedom. That’s why he’d sent her on ahead alone; he told her he would come with his vesper.
Balls of yellow, red, and purple yarn lay in the passenger seat beside her.
Memories flooded her senses. She could see the stranger as if it were yesterday. He’d forced her to sit in the middle of the floor in the cabin’s kitchen. Her hands were behind her back, the yellow yarn tied around her wrists, cutting off blood circulation. She’d done her best to wriggle her fingers to keep the blood flowing, but as the stranger walked around her inspecting his work of art, she knew he was going to kill her before he got what he wanted. He let out a weird howl, and his eyes glazed like a hungry wolf. Then, he slapped her face so hard she thought her head had been severed from her body. He mumbled that the red yarn in his hands was the blood yarn with which he would bind her ankles.
Buy Link: Amazon Stores Worldwide, Apple Book store Worldwide
A Word from the Author: Janie B is a Micro-Read with a special introductory price to acquaint readers with what I write.
Staitioned within an International Explosive Ordinance team (EOD) in Germany for six years, Gianluca Abate has never anticcipated that unexpected inciences could throw his life off balance. He didnt thim’t thin there was a situation that could touch him so closely until the day he experienced an explosive blast underwater. His life spirals downward, and he loses all hope of ever being normal again.
At a train station, he is waiting for a train to come to end it all and is so involved in what he is about to carry out that he doesn’t see the woman running toward him who is about to change the trajectory of his destiny forever.
THE POWER OF TOUCH is a story of redeeming love. A warrior stopped from ending it all finds true love through a woman who plays a musical instrument and teaches him how to hear.
Excerpt:
Aniyah watched him as he came up the escalator with the crowd. He stopped. Her ees widened as she saw him creep his feet nearer and nearer to the planform’s edge. She stared at his profile, willing him not to get any closer. When he turned his head a little sideways so she couldbehold his face, she saw him looking down the tracks. Aniyah saw his anguish and felt his pain. Her heart missed a beat.
She heard a train approaching. The station master announced over the speakers that an incoming train was passing through and ordered the people to step back from the p0latform. But the man didn*t move.. The sound got louder, and she shouted, “Move back!” But he didn’t react.
She ran toward him, whispered a short prayer, and huffed and puffed.
“At forty-two, I’m really out of shape,” she mumbled.
What was left of her ice cream cone fell out of her hand, her shoulder bag slid down her shoulders, and she let go of her pocketbook. In slow motion, she saw herself stretch her arms out to grab him. They both toppled to the cement floor, the man underneath her. The wind of the train’s passage whipped over her back. The fast moving train’s backdraft would have sucked them in its path and killed them both.
THE POWER OF TOUCH is available at all Amazon stores as an Ebook or Paperback.
Moving toward her Sixty-fifth birthday, Tessie Blount contemplates the next stage of her life. The death of her last girlfriend has her floundering as she deliberates between wanting to go on living or taking flight as all her friends have done and go up yonder. Not married and with no purpose, she questions the validity of living further until love is offered to her mostunexpectedly. But will she accept it?
EXCERPT
Teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom
Psalm 90:12 NIV 2011
Tessie Blount did not believe clouds could fall from Heaven, nor that gold was at the end of a rainbow, or that her life had to end at sixty-five… until her best girlfriend, Bob-Ann, crossed over right after her sixty-fifth birthday. As she stood by the gravesite, Tessie wasn’t so sure what she thought anymore. The ache in her heart at the loss of Bob-Ann had robbed her of her peace. She had done everything she could to keep Bob-Ann alive, but her girlfriend had been determined to go up yonder and leave her alone. Tessie had cried bitterly. The first days of aloneness nearly wiped her out. She took one last look at the grave and left the cemetery. Down to earth and by no means flighty, words of consolation given by the Pastor rose in her mind.
‘Death is unavoidable.’
Amen, Reverend! Tessie thought. As far as I know, it is inescapable, but does a person have to go at sixty-five? Can’t we live a full life after that magic retirement number?
