I’m Sure Jesus Liked Cheese: A Micro Story

I’m Sure Jesus Liked Cheese: A Micro Story

We’d love to thank Paula Nicolson from Scotland, for her story ‘I’m Sure Jesus Liked Cheese’, a sweet story about jet lag and childhood games, based on true events.

Paula Nicolson lives near Lockerbie, Scotland, with her family and is a mum to a teenage daughter, two grown-up stepchildren, and an overly chatty cat. She enjoys laughing, eating cake, and writing with Lockerbie Writers; preferably all at the same time. She worked as a scientist for 22 years in England, but now works as a librarian in a Scottish town where there’s more sheep than books (she made that fact up, but seriously, there are lots of sheep up there). She’s a published poet, short story, and a prize-winning flash fiction writer. She’s also a judge for BBC Radio 2’s 500 words and Castle Loch Trust’s children’s writing competitions.

You can check out Paula’s blog HERE

Photo by Alexander Maasch on Unsplash

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I’m Sure Jesus Liked Cheese

Have you ever tried playing Hangman with a five-year-old that has only just learned to spell?
We’d just returned from a family Christmas holiday in California to our home in Portsmouth, Hampshire. We’d met every Disney princess going (and there was a lot), ate cinnamon pretzels until we too were twisted and smelt of apple pie, and had exhausted our replies to, ‘Have a nice day!’. But the after-effects of an eight-hour time difference was taking its revenge on our bodies: I was ready for my dinner at 3am and my bed at 6am. Not helpful if you wanted to get your body back to the UK industrial revolution clock.
To alleviate the insomnia, my husband and I took to watching the US series: The Walking Dead (a horror story of life after a zombie apocalypse). Yeah, hindsight is a wonderful thing; probably not the best method to lull yourself off to sleepy-sheepy land. But we already had a steam cleaner and didn’t need a zirconium ring from the shopping channel, and so we became hooked. I even sympathized with the zombies as I too felt like chewing someone’s arm off at night with hunger, and shuffling around the daylight hours groaning.
One night, I’d managed to fall asleep at 11pm only to be awoken by my husband at 1am striking up a conversation with me about cars (WT−), and then at 2am by our daughter with a request to play Hangman; a pink felt tip and scribbling paper tucked tightly into her armpit.
Yes, why not, I thought. Eyes don’t need to be fully in focus – tick; she’s already brought the materials – tick; we don’t have to get out of bed – tick. This will be easy.
However, after 10 minutes of running through a few letters, and drawing our one but last limb, we were seconds from being hung. How could we not get this three-letter word? It was G?T, after all.
‘I give up,’ I shouted, hurling my hands above my head and waving them in the air.
‘It’s “get” Mummy, you know G … I … T!’ she said.
I will say at this point, that I’m from the Eastend of London and my husband is from Scotland and we often wondered what sort of accent she would develop. However, we needn’t have worried as we’d just been delivered evidence that her own homegrown Portsmouth accent had finally come shining through. I imagined my mother at this point, squirming, for she was always a stickler for knocking any regional accent out of me. However, with my husband and I trying not to laugh (too much), I corrected her spelling politely and gently with, I should say, no mention of what ‘git’ meant.
We decided to have one more game before, ‘We really have to try and get some sleep,’ but the hangman’s noose was beckoning, again. Why couldn’t we guess ‘??EES?S’. We asked her for a clue.
‘He was born at Christmas and came down to Earth to tell us to be nice to one another,’ she said.
‘Jesus?’
‘Yes Mummy!’
‘But that’s spelt–‘
‘C … H …E … E … S … O … S! I’m good at spelling, aren’t I?’
‘Yes darling, you are,’ I said hugging her. And if Jesus loved cheese, which I’m sure he did, he would have hugged her too.
We did, eventually, go back to sleeping in line with the UK. Our daughter’s spelling improved and we are still fans of The Walking Dead.
But my husband continues to talk to me about cars, late at night; some things never change.


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Christmas Atonement: A Flash Fiction Story

We’d like to thank Geraldine Nicole from Minnesota, USA for her Flash Fiction submission ‘Christmas Atonement’. A dramatic micro tale about a tragedy that inspires a generous new holiday tradition. Keep the stories coming guys, we are feeling blessed by your contributions!

Read the story below or click here to go to the story page! 😊

 

Christmas Atonement

If it wasn’t for the little porcelain statue of Mary and Joseph cradling their infant son, taking up a place in the middle of the mantle, one wouldn’t even know that it was Christmas day in our house.

The excited squeals and pounding of little feet on the wooden floorboards early Christmas morning were long since over and not for the same reasons as most households. Our two bright, happy little blessings, one with a crew cut and one in pigtails, had not grown up big and tall one day and left the nest in search of their own adventures, they had not met their soul mates and moved on to start their own families. No, our children, our reasons for living, had dragged our sleepy heads out of bed at an ungodly hour for the last time, 7 christmas’ ago.

We had no idea that morning, as we watched the tearing open of gifts contentedly from the couch, sipping our mugs of coffee, that by midnight that night, it would be just the two of us again. We were oblivious to the gale force of devastation heading our way. It was a perfect day, gifts were exchanged, gratitude expressed, food indulged in, family reacquainted, including our children with their 14 yr old cousin, who would later stay to babysit while we parents and grandparents attended a Christmas party at the bar 6 blocks away.

Nothing in this world could ever wipe away the incredible guilt we felt for leaving them all alone that night. What kind of parents were we to go out drinking on Christmas night, while our children were at home suffocating from the thick cloud of smoke that filled the house after they’d fallen asleep?

My husband, beat himself up for years because he wasn’t there to protect them and I, consumed by my guilt, could no longer call myself a Mother, for in my eyes a Mother (if she was paying attention) should always have a kind of intuition about disastrous events on the horizon and do everything she can to keep her babies safe.

It didn’t matter how many people tried to console us that it wasn’t our fault, how could we know the 12 year old tree lights we’d picked up at a yard sale would short out that night, turning our 7 foot Christmas tree into a towering inferno. How could we know that by the time the kids were woken from their sleep by the fire alarm downstairs, the entire ground floor of the house would be engulfed and their bedrooms upstairs full of deadly lung collapsing smoke. No, it didn’t matter how many people told us we weren’t to blame, we blamed ourselves every single day since.

Our Christmas’ were no longer full of excited laughter and family get togethers. We no longer stayed up late on Christmas eve drinking eggnog while putting together toy kitchens or bicycles with a hundred parts, reminiscing about Christmas eve’s gone by. Christmas had a whole new meaning for us now. The first few years were hard and dark and we spent the majority of Christmas day in mourning for what we’d lost but we soon tired of this painful tradition and recognised it’s unproductiveness in our lives.

We now have a new tradition. See we have two houses now. We rent a small apartment where the two of us live with our 2 dashhounds, Mary and Joseph residing on the mantle, and we have another large home that we purchased with our insurance money, were we provide shelter to families who’ve lost their homes to fires or flooding.

Every Christmas we decorate the stately home and put on a lavish feast for our residents. Although not a replacement for our lost children, it provides us with a welcome distraction and an atonement of sorts for our tormented souls.

Mum Life Micro Stories

Short stories are a great medium for weaving an exciting tale into a non time consuming format that’s easy to read and won’t steal half your day away. In this day and age with so much information and entertainment at our fingertips, it can be hard as a writer to retain a readers attention for more than a few minutes. Micro Fiction is even shorter with word counts anywhere from 100 to 1000 and they are both a wonderful way for busy readers to get their story fix and fantastic practice for writers to learn how to condense stories in order to get more depth in their narratives. We will be introducing competitions on our site at a later stage with both Micro Stories and Flash Fiction Stories, hopefully with a prize as well as publication on the blog. In the meantime here are two Micro Stories (max length is 250 words) that our administrator Jo Stewart wrote for competitions on Sweek.com (Check out her profile here for more stories.)

This story was written for the #MicroKey competition.

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KEY TO MY HEART

“That’s the key to my heart right there!” Liz nodded toward the screen which displayed in amazing clarity the outline of a tiny human skeleton.

“You and your husband must be very proud?” The ultrasound technician smiled, tapping at the keyboard.

Liz felt the sting of mourning return. The day’s events were a welcome distraction, but now fresh tears pooled in her eyes, threatening to spill over and drench her crisp white blouse.

“Oh dear, did I upset you?” The technician, a mature lady with dark hair, streaked with silver, handed Liz a tissue as the first tear escaped its shallow confines.

Liz wiped the tear from her cheek. “No, it’s just…my husband passed away 3 months ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry”

“Thanks! When I found out I was pregnant I felt I was given a piece of him to keep. If it’s a boy, I’ll give him my husband’s name.”

“Oh, what a blessing” she smiled again, turning to the screen in front of her. As she adjusted the transducer on Liz’s abdomen her expression altered.

“Is something wrong?” Liz’s chest tightened with fear.

“No, but your chances of having at least one boy just increased.” Her face beaming as she pointed to a curved line hovering above the baby’s tiny skull. “See that? There’s another baby, hiding behind the first!”

Liz’s joy overwhelmed her and the tears she’d been bravely holding back poured out and flooded her cheeks. The key to her heart was now a twin set.

This story was written for the #MicroGame competition.

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A CHILDISH GAME

I lay motionless on the floor. Something was hanging above my face, but I couldn’t focus on it. I tried to reach out but had no control over my body. My arm jerked up and down with my tenacious efforts, fear and insecurity consuming me as I realised it was futile.

My heart beat faster when I noticed I was not alone. “Maybe she’s not ready for this game” I heard a deep, unfamiliar voice say. I felt desperate to know who was in my home, my safe place. I wanted to cry but decided bravery was a better friend.
My heart quickened again as I heard footsteps. Someone else was now in the room. I felt pain in my stomach which gradually intensified as the two talked in hushed tones. No longer able to remain silent, I tried to yell but could not form words, so I cried out anxiously.

Suddenly a shadowy figure moved toward me, bent down and stretched out their arms toward my now stiffened body. What would they do? Take this pain away or prolong it for more agonizing hours? Their face moved closer toward mine and become clearer. I could finally make out their features…it was mummy! She picked me up, held me close and kissed my forehead. I heard her heart beat and smelt her sweet familiar aroma.

“She’s just hungry” she said “it’s time for her feed”.

I was safe once more, in the arms of the one who bore me.