All Story Du Jour tales are available online and free! A small offering in these trying times.
 Hike Up Mission Peak Approx. 1k words A slog with old friends seeks that which is past but lies between. Here's a sample of the writing: "Rocks crunch like breakfast cereal beneath Zac’s boots, and the sound transports him to the butcher block table of his childhood home. There’s a half gallon of milk, a box of Lucky Charms. A Christmas wish book between him and his brother. And there’s music, his mother feeling out a soft, sad number on the upright in the den. It’s a bit lachrymose, this halting tune, the product of a few lessons she’d splurged on in the fall, but it becomes more familiar as she goes. The Michael Stanley Band. Not really, although Zac can’t help imagining it. He turns the thin, vivid pages of the wish book, full of board games, action figures, and race car sets. In the other room, his mother’s fingers plink like rain, figuring it out as she goes. The chords rise through the house, into the winter air and straight up the charts. When Gary turns to him with a smile, Zac lets go of the pictures of dreamed-for toys so his heart can sled across the snow-smooth melody." Note: Perhaps its time to swap out Du Jour with the French phrase for 'week or two' since that seems to be the publishing time frame. But nothing endures like the temporary. |
