Category: Short Stories

Happiness

~ mariasjostrand ~ Leave a comment

A/N: Okay, my brain has basically been fried for the last couple of days. (I just finished my exams.) But now it’s working again, and it produced this little thing. Like or comment at the bottom of the text. Enjoy!

If there was one thing Marcie had always known it was that she wanted to be happy. Her mother wasn’t, she knew. Her father wasn’t either, though he liked to pretend to. Not that she saw much of him. He always seemed to be working. But sometimes he would be home and he would buy something shiny and new and expensive, and his eyes would shine with happiness, but after an hour or so they would dim once again, and the happy look in them would be gone.

Marcie’s mother, on the other hand, found her happiness at the bottom of a bottle. Her kind of happiness was even worse in Marcie‘s opinion. It would stay for about as long as her father’s, but afterwards her mother would moan and throw up and look miserable, and Marcie decided she didn’t want that kind of happiness either.

Sadly enough those two were the only ones she knew, so she would have to figure out her own kind of happiness first.

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The Sisters

~ mariasjostrand ~ 2 Comments

A/N: Okay, so this week was crazy busy with the exam and what not, so… well, this is what I got to give you guys for this week. Please comment if you have any thoughts… about this story or just in general. 

Of course the oldest one was the prettiest. That almost went without saying. Diane was a cute child, who turned into a pretty girl, who, in time, turned into a beautiful woman. And she knew it. She was the type of girl, who knew very well the effect she had on men and she always had at least a dozen or so chasing after her. In time she grew up to be an actress, and suddenly the whole world was in love with her.

Annabelle was the second-oldest by eleven months. She was the genius of the family. Graduated with honours from Harvard University and went on to Yale. At the age of thirty she had several published books, was a renowned scientist, and there was talk of her winning the Nobel Prize for physics.

Kathy, born a year and a half later, was the second-youngest and the medal-winner in the family. She was simply just the best at everything there had anything to do with sport. She ended up as a swimmer for the Olympic team, and no one was really surprised there. After all; then success like that could only be expected from any sister of Diane and Annabelle.

That left me then. The baby sister. The youngest. The problem was that after Diane got the looks, Annabelle got the brain, and Kathy got the talent… well, there really wasn’t anything left for me. An average girl in every sense of the world, which really isn’t as bad if it hadn’t been because people expected so much more of me. They expected me to be prettier, smarter, better. Every aspect of me disappointed my family. The way I looked, my grades, my clumsy nature. How could I possibly be blood-related to my sisters?

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Isabella

~ mariasjostrand ~ 1 Comment

A/N: Another short story! Yeah!

I wonder, who do you guys think are the real you? The one you’re acting like, or the one you feel you have hidden away inside of you? 

Jessie Pitcher had never had a particularly daring life. She had gone directly from high school to college, where she had studied economics. Sure, in college she had gone to a party or two, but she had kind of just been standing at the edge of the party looking in, rather than really being a part of it. She had tried alcohol, but the only time she’d been really pissed a friend of hers had walked her to her dorm and put her to bed. Nothing had happened. She had been too scared, too smart, to try any kind of drugs or even just cigarettes, and when she left college four years later she’d been drunk once, missed a class twice and gone to a party eight times. None of it – the alcohol, the skipping classes, the parties – had been particularly thrilling experiences.

After college she had landed a job as an accountant. The money was good, and she was able to put a bit aside every month despite having to pay off her student’s loan. She got a pleasant two-bedroom apartment in the nicer part of the city, and was able to live of something besides pasta for a change. She never travelled. She never took any of the courses at the local night school she always wanted to try. She never… well, she never really did anything. Until the day she decided that she had to.

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The Little Girl, Who Never Grew Up

~ mariasjostrand ~ 6 Comments

A/N: A short story, where I had a lot of trouble deciding on the ending – so let me know what you think!

Once upon a time there was a couple, who seemed to have everything. They were a handsome couple with a good income, and a charismatic personality. They were the perfect image of what a couple was supposed to be like, and this image only became more perfect when they had a perfect little girl.

The little girl was named Lucy, and she was in her parents’ eyes the most perfect little girl there had ever existed. She truly was a beautiful child with her lithe build and heart-shaped face, her rosy lips and her doe-brown eyes. She was a beautiful little girl and people would often comment on this.

“Oh, what a beautiful little girl,” they would say. “She’s the prettiest little girl I have ever seen. If only she were to stay that way forever.”

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The Wedding Shop

~ mariasjostrand ~ 1 Comment

A/N: Another flash fiction! (Though this one was almost a short story)

There were few things Riley detested quite as much as the myth of Happily Ever After.

The idea that if only you met a man, your soul mate so to speak, your life would instantly become perfect and you would have nothing else to wish for. Well, perhaps a couple of children. Perfect copies of your perfect man. And because they were so perfect and he was so perfect, your life would be perfect as well. A little world of rainbows and sunshine.

The mere thought of it made her want to hurl.

Which was probably why a bridal shop hadn’t been her first choice as a job opportunity.

But it was 2009 and in the midst of the economic crisis you took what you could get. Even if you hated weddings, and your job was to tell a bride twenty times a day that she looked like a ‘real-life princess’. You had to pay the bills somehow or another.

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2384

~ mariasjostrand ~ 5 Comments

A/N: My first finished SF! Ever! I wanted to try something new, so I hope the result is acceptable! Enjoy!

It was the year of 2384, and there had just been yet another election. Yet another choice of leader.

Elisa Parker, a generally average citizen, had always considered herself to be sensibly skeptical of everything that simply seemed too good to be true, so when Bernard Summer had first started appearing as a candidate as the successive Head of State, she hadn’t believed his lies.

He promised to end corruption, to close the huge gap between the rich and the poor, to not let the wealthy make the decisions in his place. He promised that anyone should have free health care, and Elisa had looked down on her missing arm with a cynical smile; a souvenir from an explosion in the laboratory. She had been supposed to get a prosthesis, but for reasons she was never truly explained, that had simply never happened.

Summer promised that those kinds of things would never happen under his reign. That anyone should have access to decent health care as well as a decent standard of living. The same old promises, which every candidate came with.

But when Summer actually won the election, something most unusual happened. He kept his promises.

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Missing Out

~ mariasjostrand ~ 1 Comment

A/N: There’s nothing wrong with working hard. But there is most definitely such a thing as working to hard! 

“Andy, come down, it’s your grandfather’s birthday and you’re missing it.”

It was her mother’s voice, soft and relaxed, and Andrea sighed in annoyance. She knew it was her grandfather’s birthday and of course she wanted to celebrate with him, but last Wednesday had been her older brother’s birthday, and the Sunday before that had been mother’s day. Then there had been her parent’s anniversary, her grandmother’s get-together and the barbecue her father always made such a big deal. It seemed like her parents just didn’t understand she didn’t have time for such frivolous activities.

“Coming,” she yelled back; knowing fully well that her voice wasn’t as relaxed as her mother’s had been. Now or ever.

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Over the Graveyard, Original Vs. Edited

~ mariasjostrand ~ 3 Comments

A/N: Okay, this weeks post is about editing! Me editing someone else’s first draft.

First of we have the original version, but if you’re not interested in that, you can just skip it. If not, please comment and let me know if you agree with my changes!

Original Version

”AWESOME TITLE GOES HERE

The wind howled through the trees, the rain whipped the ground, and the darkness had swallowed the forest like an angry giant from ancient times past, rolling in along with the thin, crescent moon to cover all the land in deep ink. Somewhere not far from here was the graveyard, where cracked headstones reached out of the ground like broken teeth biting at the sky, covered in moss and rot; names barely readable after so many years of neglect. No one remembered who rested there; everyone had forgotten. Even the priest, who didn’t even seem to care. The church tended to the new graves alright, but not the old ones. It seemed no one cared about those. It was a shame: when we forget the dead simply because we did not know them personally, when we pretend the distant past matters less than the recent past, we lose part of ourselves. We must remember if we want to have a chance to improve ourselves. This is true for all humans, everywhere: In this matter, we are one.

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Still Waiting…

~ mariasjostrand ~ 2 Comments

The park bench was empty. Good. It was funny how he hadn‘t even considered what he’d do if someone else had sat there. With a nervous movement Robert glanced down on his watch. It was half past one. They were supposed to meet at two, but he’d gotten here early. He couldn’t help himself.

His body hurt so weirdly as he sat down. Apparently he’d trained harder yesterday than he’d realised. He wondered if she would be early as well.

Her name was Daisy, and she was without a doubt the most beautiful girl he’d ever laid his eyes on. Sure, Delia, whom all the boys chased after, was more classical beautiful with her full lips and the body of a temptress, but there was something about Daisy which made Delia pale in comparison. Robert had spent countless hours trying to figure out what exactly made Daisy different than all the other skirts he’d chased.

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A Woman

~ mariasjostrand ~ 2 Comments

He honestly didn’t think he expected too much.

He already had a job, which he not only enjoyed, but also earned quite the living doing. He had a beautiful apartment, a fancy car and a pair of loving parents, who gave him unconditional love. So all he really felt like he was missing was a woman. That wasn’t much to ask for, was it?

She would have to be attractive of course. Tall, voluptuous, with long hair and blue eyes. Though he would be willing to compromise with the eye colour – if necessary. It was however essential that she would be a non-smoker, and she would never have tried drugs. She definitely shouldn’t be a virgin, but she wasn’t allowed to have slept with more than a handful of guys either. Two or three would be preferable. That wasn’t too much to ask for, was it?

She‘d be intelligent as well. Preferable she came from an Ivy League college. She’d have an IQ, which was over 110, but less than 135. He himself had 138. And for obvious reasons she shouldn’t be smarter than him.

She should be funny. He couldn’t be with someone, who wouldn’t understand his jokes. She’d laugh at them, and not that fake, polite laughter he hated so much. Her laugh should be genuine, but not too loud. A feminine laugh.

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