Month: April 2024

Shadow’s grasp

2024-04-29 / admin bot / 4 Comments

Ted turned down a deserted corridor, leaving the lobby behind and cautiously entering the “OFF LIMITS” area of the historic Capitol Theater. The lobby’s lush decor and the scent of stale popcorn gave way to a functional, slightly chaotic backstage, dimly lit by naked bulbs that cast long, quivering shadows across the walls. The floorboards creaked underfoot with Ted’s every step, disturbing the otherwise tomblike silence.

Startled by a low-hanging cobweb, Ted reflexively brushed off the lapels of his plaid jacket and rubbed his face. The last thing he needed was a spider in his beard. As he passed racks full of musty old costumes and shelves stacked high with paint cans, he straightened his collar and thumbed the button of the tape recorder in his jacket pocket. This would be the most influential scoop of his career if he could only keep his nerves in check.

Dad dates (My perfect dad 52)

2024-04-22 / admin bot

Buzzwords, the city’s trendy local cafe frequented by university students and business executives alike, was always busy on Sunday mornings. The rush of early-morning errand runners had already come through, and with the after-church crowds now pouring in seeking coffee and brunch, free tables were scarce. Theo snagged one of the last remaining two tops by the front door and fidgeted nervously, awaiting his date’s arrival.

The faint scent of starch emanated from his crisp, white, button-down shirt, and his caged junk twitched in his dark gray trousers as he scanned the room, wondering whether any of the men already here was his date. Each time the cafe doors opened, the April wind whirled around him, making him grateful for the open-necked shirt collar. The last thing he needed was to spend the date subduing a necktie determined to flap around in the breeze.

Two for one (My perfect dad 51)

2024-04-15 / admin bot / 0 Comments

DadNet charged a lot of money and made grand promises without much to back them up. But I didn’t care. I was desperate. For the last three years, I had secretly lusted after my next-door neighbor Keith. I watched the 40-something divorced computer programmer wash his car in the driveway, mow his lawn in the summertime, and shovel the pavement in the wintertime. I had built up an entire relationship in my head and played it out in a thousand different ways. In some scenarios, we were married. In others, we were just fuck buddies. Keith wasn’t a supermodel or anything. There was nothing about him that I found particularly intimidating, and there was no real reason why I couldn’t just approach him and ask him out. I was just too scared of rejection.

And then, one day, I saw the “for sale” sign staked into his front yard. After all this time secretly lusting after Keith, now he was moving, and I would never get my chance at him. I kicked myself for an entire weekend, already resigned to the fact that Keith was destined to be the one that got away.

The pageant, part 2 (My perfect dad 50)

2024-04-08 / admin bot / 0 Comments

Read part 1 to get caught up…

As the evening started, Patrick perched on the edge of his barstool, his heart thumping with perturbation and disbelief. The air buzzed with an energy he barely recognized, charged with surreal, disquieting novelty. Mr. Leather Evergreen, the local fetish pageant he had followed religiously and whose title he clinched last year, had been turned on its head. The familiar program of events was gone, and each had been replaced with a bizarre suburban analog.

Instead of showing off their leather craftsmanship skills, the contestants were each handed a pair of shears and tasked with trimming a small patch of lawn to perfection. The stop clock ticked its final seconds, and Patrick watched in bewilderment as a dozen portly, middle-aged men sweated and fretted over every blade of grass on their miniature plots of turf. The winner, a guy Patrick recalled from the old Hideaway days, high fived the entire panel of judges when they revealed he’d trimmed his grass uniformly to one-quarter inch in height, exactly what the HOA prescribed.

Doing time

2024-04-01 / admin bot / 2 Comments

Travis Barnes always woke up 16 minutes before his alarm clock sounded. Every weekday morning at 4:14, his eyes opened. He lay motionless until 4:29. He wasn’t sure if he had conditioned himself to do this or whether the implant dictated his actions even at this early hour. He gazed up at the ceiling of his room at the halfway house, savoring the last few minutes of repose he would have until long after the sun set that night. He thought he noticed a new crack forming near the corner above his head, but he couldn’t be sure. After so many months in the program, the days had begun to run together. There was little sense in paying attention to such minutiae.

As he counted down the minutes, Travis tried not to think about the sequence of events that landed him in this mess. Nevertheless, the memory always returned, eating up valuable seconds of his vanishing downtime. Like with the alarm clock. Travis couldn’t tell if it was his own guilty conscience or the implant that dredged up the memory every morning. The program’s administrators refused to explain the details.

Month: April 2024

Shadow’s grasp

Dad dates (My perfect dad 52)

Two for one (My perfect dad 51)

The pageant, part 2 (My perfect dad 50)

Doing time

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