Category: Short Stories

Changes

~ mariasjostrand ~ 1 Comment

Cursing softly as the doorbell rang, Christopher sent a quick prayer upwards that it wasn’t yet another charity organisation. Ever since he’d won those fifty millions, so much had changed. One of the changes that he could have been without was people asking for money.

It wasn’t like he was against the idea of giving back. He’d actually started his own charity organisation since he’d won, but by now he was just sick and tired of people telling him that he was a bad person if he didn’t also give to their organisation. Like he was some sort of horrible human being just because he didn’t give to everyone who asked. Like distant relatives and old classmates.

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The Sandstorm

~ mariasjostrand ~ 5 Comments

There was a sandstorm coming in.

Nikki saw it coming with an odd calmness. They’d checked the weather reports. It wasn’t the season for them. And yet there it was, and they couldn’t have more than a minute or so before it hit.

Looking over at her colleagues, she saw the panic in their faces before she felt it herself. Watching Christian cover his face with a scarf, she hurried to do the same, making sure her entire face was covered. Sandstorms weren’t vital as long as you kept the sand out of your lungs, and the important thing to remember was to stay calm.

Except the closer the storm got, the harder it became to remember what she’d once read in a textbook.

And then it hit, and Nikki was blind.

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A Meeting with Adonis – Oh, and George Too

~ mariasjostrand ~ 5 Comments

A/N: Not quite sure how I feel about this story, so please let me know what you think! 

Enjoy!

Heart beating wildly, Hannah smiled at the incredible handsome man who’d just walked into the book store. An Adonis thrown into the midst of her normal world of complaining customers and delayed orders.

“May I help you?” she asked.

He shrugged, turning intensely blue eyes towards her. “I’m looking for a book for class,” he told her.

“Then I guess you’ve come to the right place,” Hannah joked.

The man frowned. “It’s for my English class,” he said. “We’re supposed to read a classic or whatever.”

“Of course. Do you have a preferred author?”

“No, it’s supposed to be a classic. Like old, you know?”

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A Single Drop

~ mariasjostrand ~ 5 Comments

A/N: Hi everyone! So this week’s post is a bit different. Not only will it be the longest piece posted (without being divided up) but it’ll also be a Western, which I have never tried writing before, so any comments are much appreciated!

Enjoy! 🙂

Elise made her way through the saloon, hating that she had to be there. The saloon was as always full of smoke, and it smelled like beer and sweat. Both scents that she had learned to associate with men.

“Dad!” she called out, trying to catch a glimpse of her father, the formerly esteemed Doctor Hamilton. The man who’d used to be the most respected man of their small town, but hadn’t been the same since Elise’s mother had died seven years ago. Elise had been eleven, and even the death of her mother hadn’t hit her quite as hard as her dad’s transformation. He’d lost his job, his reputation, and, seemingly, also his love for his only daughter.

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Dad

~ mariasjostrand ~ 4 Comments

A/N: Another Friday gone by, another story written in the very last minute… enjoy!

“I got the job,” I told my dad as soon as I had started the car.

He grinned at me, pride evident in his face, and I smiled back at him, equally proud of myself. I had wanted to be an artist ever since I was a little girl, and my dad had always supported by ambitions. As a single father he’d had a hard time, and working two jobs to pay for my tuition at the School of Art didn’t help. Thankfully I’d gotten a part scholarship. Otherwise there was no way a blue collar like my dad could ever afford it no matter how hard he worked. My job at the local book store hadn’t paid off that much either.

My mother had died when I was pretty young, and I was used to it just being my dad and I. We’d scraped by. We hadn’t gotten everything we wanted in life, far from it, but we’d survived. And now our hard work was finally paying off.

“Can you believe it?” I asked him. “Christopher is one of the biggest names in the world of art. Like, at all. To be his assistant is huge, I mean; I know it’s not my own collection or anything, but it’ll get my name out there, you know? In a couple of years my name is going to be known. Not world-renowned, but known. And I can finally make more than a few bucks of my art.”

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If I Had a Daughter

~ mariasjostrand ~ 1 Comment

A/N: Okay, I was actually really, really satisfied with how this ended up. I think it is better if read out loud, but I hope you guys still think it’s okay. 

Today’s post is partly inspired by Jesse Dwight’s “If I should have a daughter” and partly by Sarah Kay’s youtube video by the same name. 

I read Jesse Dwight (found here: https://jessedwight.com/2016/07/04/off-topic-if-i-should-have-a-daughter-i-would-want-her-to-know/) and I just had to write my own. 

Anyway, enjoy, review, like, reblog, whatever you like!!

If I had a daughter I would take her to Paris.

Because if I had a daughter then we would walk through the streets of the city of love. We would stop at a small cafe bathed in sunlight for a croissant and a cappuccino, and she would pretend that she enjoyed the taste even though we both knew that she would secretly much rather have a coke.

We would go shopping then, and I’d moan and complain over how much money I was spending, but I would have a little secret smile, and she would only grin at me and tease me right back.

If I had a daughter we would go to the Louvre and look at the art. If I had a daughter she would love art. We would go through the galleries, and she would point out her favourite pieces, and we would see the Mona Lisa and I’d smile at the disappointment in her face when she realised how small and insignificant it actually appeared. Continue reading “If I Had a Daughter” →

Love Bite

~ mariasjostrand ~ Leave a comment

A/N: Hi, guys! So, for july month my summer job is going to get pretty crazy (50+ hours a week plus about 14 hours of transport) so I’m not a hundred I’ll be able to post every Friday. I’ll try though, but no promises 😉

Anyway, here’s this Friday’s story: Enjoy and comment!

It wasn’t that Meredith was bullied or anything. After all; in order to be bullied she would first have to be noticed, and Meredith was… well, she was as close to invisible as you could get without it becoming kind of cool.

She spent her days in school sitting in the back of the class, never raising her hand or in any other way drawing attention to herself. After school she went home to be ignored some more by her parents because they were too focused on the many problems of her older brother. Alcohol, drugs, theft, you name it. It was no wonder that they didn’t have time for the daughter that didn‘t give them any trouble. They were busy enough with one of their children as it were.

The point was that Meredith had gotten used to being lonely. Truth be told she couldn’t remember being anything but. She’d just never been comfortable around other people.

Which was when she discovered the internet.

Cyberspace to be exact.

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Curiosity

~ mariasjostrand ~ Leave a comment

And here’s the original work that I promised you guys! A bit different than what I usually write, but I hope you enjoy it just the same. Please like or comment if you do 😉

In Elena’s opinion there were few better jobs than being a babysitter. Of course then it obviously wasn’t what she was going to do with the rest of her life. After graduation she was going to be a model. But for now, as she was about to finish her third year of high school, babysitting was an acceptable substitute.

For one thing she could already put the children to bed around eight, and the parents usually didn‘t come home until ten or eleven at night. Which meant two-three hours of being paid for watching television, eating whatever delicious thing she could find in the refrigerator and chatting with her friends over the phone. But her favourite part of babysitting, her absolute favourite, had to be the snooping.

Elena had always been a curious child. A curious child who had eventually grown up into an even more curious teenager. She loved knowing everything there was to knows about other people’s personal lives. She lived for gossip and dirty little secrets. And boy, could you find many dirty little secrets as a babysitter.

She went through medicine cabinets, jewel boxes, night stand tables. The juicier the better. And did she find some juicy stuff.

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A Deal With Death

~ mariasjostrand ~ Leave a comment

A/N: I really should stop writing these an hour before I’m supposed to post them… Anyway, everybody says that it is impossible to change Death’s mind, but is it really? Please like or comment… or both. Both is good. 

Georgiana Evans had been born in 1913 and had grown up in Britain during the war. Since then she had travelled the world, buried two husbands, moved to the states, become a more than locally known photographer, as well as a mother, a grandmother and a great grandmother.

She was now over a hundred years old, and though her mind was as sharp as ever, her body wasn’t keeping up with it. The doctors had told her that she had a year left, tops. Georgiana, however, had stopped listening to what the doctors told her. This was her third promise of Death, and Death had yet to deliver. During her lifetime Georgiana had not only had a hip replaced, she had also gone through two heart surgeries, and had a breast as well as a lung removed on two different occasions.

Though she’d been told her time was up, Georgiana wasn’t ready to die, so she had simply decided not to. She knew her family expected her to do so soon, but there was simply so much she hadn’t done yet. Georgiana Evans wanted to live forever, and damn it if she wasn’t going to!

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The Perfect Recipe

~ mariasjostrand ~ Leave a comment

A/N: Yet another week, yet another story…

If there was one thing Jonas Svensson had always wanted then it had to be the perfect ham and cheese sandwich. His favourite moment from when he was a child had been when his mother made him one. Playing soccer with his friends, rescuing damsels in distress on his computer, eating candy, had all been less important than that first bite of a really good ham and cheese sandwich. But somehow, no matter how good his mother’s had been, there had never been quite the perfect balance between the bread, the cheese and the ham. It was, in Jonas humble opinion, the most important thing to consider when making a ham and cheese sandwich.

He grew up to be a web developer, because it had seemed like as good a job as any, and lived in an age of twenty-eight in a beautiful apartment, which had been equally beautifully furnished by his two sisters.

It wasn’t like he was obsessed or anything. He liked his job, and had quite a few hobbies. He liked building miniature airplanes and he was still a member of a soccer club. But his favourite hobby was still to experience in order to create the perfect ham and cheese sandwich.

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