Buried by Karen Jones
She peeled the potatoes and let the skins fall to the floor to mingle with the remnants of previous meals. The laundry mountain teetered on the table top, poised to join the trash on the mud-smeared linoleum.
His snores echoed through the tiny house, his breath pungent enough to tinge the foetid air with an acrid taste she could never quite shift.
But nothing masked the stench of failure that seeped up through the floorboards, taunting her: the stress she'd been unable to endure; the chances she'd never taken, even if he'd let her.
All those children who had never been, yet always would be, under her feet.
Karen Jones's work has been published in Writers' Forum, Candis, The New Writer, Our Atticus, Alors, et Toi, 'The Wonderful World of Worders', and 'Discovering a Comet and other stories'. She was short listed for the 2007 Asham Award and took third prize in the 2010 Mslexia short story competition.
His snores echoed through the tiny house, his breath pungent enough to tinge the foetid air with an acrid taste she could never quite shift.
But nothing masked the stench of failure that seeped up through the floorboards, taunting her: the stress she'd been unable to endure; the chances she'd never taken, even if he'd let her.
All those children who had never been, yet always would be, under her feet.
Karen Jones's work has been published in Writers' Forum, Candis, The New Writer, Our Atticus, Alors, et Toi, 'The Wonderful World of Worders', and 'Discovering a Comet and other stories'. She was short listed for the 2007 Asham Award and took third prize in the 2010 Mslexia short story competition.
