Three Stories by Jane McDermott
Fifty
In the crazy yoga class it is fifteen hundred degrees and everyone acts like nothing’s going on. Everyone moves through yoga postures glistening like they’ve been dipped in Vaseline because it’s fifteen hundred degrees in the room, but no one lets on that it’s out of the ordinary.
When the class is small, the teacher gives instruction and walks around helping students make adjustments. When she came to help me as I struggled with a posture she asked me if I had any injuries.
“Well,” I said. “I had a really difficult childhood.”
“Remember to breathe,” she offered. “Keep breathing.”
Ninety-Nine
It was snowing and blowing crazy hard—sideways almost. The weather didn’t bother the deer much; he stepped steadily to reach the shelter of a thicket fifty feet away. It bothered the car a great deal; it had been surging and skidding for miles.
When they faced each other, the car panicked and stalled while the deer in three quick springs entered the safety of the woods where he went on to rut and sire many offspring.
The car barely made it back to its garage and when it got there, bled out from a cracked master cylinder and died.
Faith
I was on a treadmill in front of a window that overlooked a grassy park.
I watched a man walk across the grass carrying bags filled with what I assumed was his possessions.
I concluded that he was homeless.
He put his stuff down and removed his shoes. He took a water bottle out of one of his bags and washed his feet.
I concluded that he was crazy.
Then he lay a towel down carefully on the grass. He stood in front of it and began to pray.
I concluded that he was a Muslim, and I’m a jerk.
Jane McDermott is the author of Look Busy: One hundred 100-word stories by and for the easily distracted. She lives in Oakland with her wife, assorted cats, chickens, and bees. Read the interview with McDermott, “‘Writerly Redemption’ Paved with 100-Word Stories.” Learn more about her at her website.
Photo Credit: legomeee
yo my homie, this was sihk
Faith was g
Rlly liked it
Wow! Inspiring! Loved them all especially faith and change in perspectives of the observer over a very short space of time and loved the humour of it.