Micro story

Robbery: A Micro Story

Jo Caddy

72915899_2890017564350716_2552652682108076032_n

A short and sweet story about the meaningful things we allow our children to steal from us.

Fiona M. Jones is a regular contributor to Mum Life Stories, some of her titles include ‘Mud‘ & ‘Tiny Green Apples‘. She is a part-time teacher, a parent and a spare-time writer, with work recently published by Folded Word, Buckshot Magazine and Silver Pen.

She is also one of the judges for our Micro Fiction Competition.

She lives with her husband and 2 sons (aged 15 & 17) in Fife, Scotland, where she works, writes & ministers. You can read more about Fiona here, in her Mum Life Success Story.

You can also follow Fiona on Twitter or Linkedin



Robbery

You are hereby charged with the following diminutive crimes and shall be called upon to make recompense if guilty.

Firstly you stole my heart: you cuted me out and bent me insistently to your will until I found myself lying on the floor, playing with your toys and speaking your language.

You stole food off my plate. Time after time I wondered where the butter had gone—and wondered how you had grown so tubby.

You pilfered my fluffiest jumpers to make yourselves nests. You took my scarf to pull your snow-sledge. You commandeered Daddy’s watches to wear proudly on your arms, and you appropriated my pink bed-socks to dress your teddy bears.

You removed hair-clips from my head for miniature mediaeval weaponry, and ruined my kitchen scissors for whatever you were doing in the garage. You took my best silver ink-pen to write stories about seals and spaceships. You committed fraud, declaring at random intervals that your toys were having a birthday and I had to give out presents.

And, for my part, I have abstracted a hundred crayoned works of art and a hundred misspelled masterpieces of literature. I have stashed my swag in a cupboard you know nothing about, and I treasure them as mine.

Case withdrawn.

Get your FREE Ebook

Accomplish more IN a fraction of the time

The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

ebook button

Enter the MICRO FICTION COMPETITION!

Sign up to our mailing list!

Read more micro stories:

confessions cover

20190809_171312_0000.png

20190617_123714_0000.png

 

 

Baby Oak: A Micro Story

Jo Caddy

She’s done it again, captivated the imagination with a descriptive, true-to-life tale, full of warmth and nostalgia, in her latest micro story contribution entitled ‘Baby Oak’.

Fiona M. Jones is a regular contributor to our site and the subject of one of our Mum Life Success Stories (which you can read here). Fiona lives with her husband and 2 teenage sons in Fife, Scotland, where she works, writes & ministers. If you’d like to follow Fiona’s work and journey, simply visit her Facebook page.



 

Baby Oak

In the muddy, brambled place we still call the Hundred-Acre Wood, a tiny oak stands barely waist-height: my babies’ baby tree.

A decade ago my children played in autumn’s treasures of conkers and acorns. They planted some in flower-pots behind the greenhouse. They neglected and forgot them, discovered something still living two years later, and began to love it again with clumsy hands and far too much water. I took pity at last on the poor stunted treelet, still hardly more than a seedling; I gave my children a spade and told them to go and set it free.

They carried the pot and the spade away down the trod path towards the old railway, through the small wooded area that probably equals an acre or two but seemed big to them when first they named it. They dug a hole, not very deep, and planted their tree; and they showed me, later, where to find it.

Half-forgotten once more, Baby Oak hides in among the tall, ragged grasses. It hasn’t yet learned to drop its leaves in autumn. It hasn’t yet claimed its own piece of sky above undergrowth and broken stone wall. But out of sight it slowly spreads its roots and survives.

When I walk through our old Hundred-Acre Wood I turn off the path to look at it again. It will grow up, as other babies do. It will spread gnarling, asymmetric branches and drop acorns of its own—for mice and squirrels to eat, for little children to collect and treasure, for future oaks to grow.

More…

Read more Flash Fiction stories like this one, including Fiona’s stories Mud and Tiny Green Apples.

If you’d like to submit a story for consideration, to be published on this blog, please visit our submissions page for more information.

Don’t forget to sign-up to our mailing list to receive all the latest news, stories and promos (including writing and giveaway competitions), plus receive a FREE ebook exclusive to our email subscribers.

Get your FREE Ebook

How To Accomplish More In A Fraction Of The Time eCOVER WHITE

The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

ebook button

THE CHOICE: A FlashFiction Story

Jo Caddy

I’m Back

There you are! Sorry that I haven’t posted in quite some time, life has been hectic and full on lately. It’s been 4.5 months now since I became a single mum again and I’ve had quite a struggle balancing out 5 children, this blog, my online store, life crisis’, sickness in the house and my social life, well…who am I kidding? I don’t have a social life, I’m a single mum of 5, haha. But that’s ok, at the moment life is wonderfully chaotic and making time for me and the things I enjoy (including this blog) is almost impossible, but it’s just a season. A time is coming where I will be passionately and vigorously writing on a daily or more likely weekly basis and filling this blog with amazing content (a little bit of confidence never hurt 😉 In all seriousness though there are some great articles in the pipeline and some inspiring stories awaiting publication and it’s just a matter of time before I will get them all up here for your reading pleasure.

Today I have an intense piece of Flash Fiction from my very own Mother Suzy Caddy, to share with you. I hope you enjoy it and please stay tuned (follow us for updates) for more stories coming very soon.

Suzy Caddy is retired and lives in Perth, Western Australia with her husband David. She is a Mother to two daughters and Grandmother to 5. When she’s not spending time helping in various church ministries, she loves to bake, write and be crafty!


The Choice

I stood there, tears running down my face. I needed this job, it was imperative I kept it. After all, my two young girls were counting on me. How would we survive without it. It was becoming harder and harder to get a good job, so much had changed. So many legal forms to sign. Oceans of politically correct hoops to jump through. Proof of this, proof of that. Where would it end.

I didn’t know what we would do. There was some money stashed away, and we all had ready bags packed, just in case. But still, I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I had hoped they wouldn’t ask me to do the one thing I could never do. Once I went down this road though there would be no going back.It was happening everywhere now and so many people were losing their jobs. Because of minority groups, things had changed dramatically. Even the people I worked with where so different from when I had started here 15 years ago. My girls weren’t that young any more at 11 and 12. Although this would test them to the limit. I hoped I had done my job properly. They were both kind and compassionate. I had warned them this day might come, and told them to be ready.Was I crazy.

How could I jeopardise everyone like this. But how could I not. I was continually being told, these are the rules now, if you want to keep your job, you must comply, but what they were asking me to do, what they were asking all of us to do, was unthinkable and I couldn’t, wouldn’t agree. It wasn’t right.I considered carefully then, what I would need. There was ample provisions in the supply room next door. I needed to hurry though. Glancing around, I slipped into the room and quickly appropriated all I could from the drawers and cabinets and threw everything in a drawstring bag. Then, heart pounding, I grabbed my mobile and made the phone call.

Next, I checked the hallway. No one. I suspected they wanted to distance themselves. Cowards. Out of sight out of mind, seemed to be how everyone avoided the moral disgrace but at least their absence made it easier for me to do what I must.Just do it and be quick I had been told. But no, never. It was beyond imagining. Carefully I approached the bench. So innocent, so pure. So unsuspecting. The syringe full of life stealing liquid sat in a metal tray next to the cot, awaiting my compliance. My tears nearly blinded me as I choked back sobs and gently gathered the tiny 34 week new born baby girl, who was very much alive, into my arms. I stared at her perfect tiny face and knew I was making the right decision. I would never comply.

Wrapping her gently and holding her tightly against my chest , I fled down the back stairs of the hospital to my car, praying they wouldn’t notice I was gone, for quite some time. My girls would be waiting at home, ready to leave for our lonely little cabin in the mountains, and the unknown.

~ Suzy Caddy

More Stories

20180916_154757_0001.pngAn Organised Mind Cover

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get your FREE Ebook

How To Accomplish More In A Fraction Of The Time eCOVER WHITE

The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

ebook button

TINY GREEN APPLES: A Micro Story

TINY GREEN APPLES: A Micro Story

Jo Caddy

We are super excited to bring you another micro story, entitled‘Tiny Green Apples’, from the very talented Fiona Jones. A cute tale about loving your children through actions not just words. We hope you enjoy reading it and if you’d like to submit a story of your own, please see our submission page for more info.

Fiona Jones is a part-time teacher, a parent and a spare-time writer, with work recently published by Folded Word, Buckshot Magazine and Silver Pen. You may have seen other stories from Fiona on our site, including ‘Mud‘ and ‘A Place‘.

You can follow Fiona on Twitter or Linkedin

Tiny Green Apples

This page contains affiliate links which may earn me a commission if you click and make a purchase.  For more information please see our privacy policy. Affiliate links help me to be able to keep doing this blog. 

TINY GREEN APPLES

SOS! What do you do with a large—a very large—bagful of wild apples, hard and green and sized like golf balls? Google doesn’t have a page for this.

Refusing the apples is not an option. Ten-year-old squidgelet took a shopping bag, put on jeans and wellies and fought his way through undergrowth and thorns to the back end of a desolate wasteland where someone must have thrown away an apple core decades ago. “It was difficult,” he says proudly, “and I got hurt and scratched.” He has provided for his family, like a cat bringing home what cats bring home, and my role is clear: to accept them, to cook them and to submit the results for his approval.

Did I bring this on myself? Ever since my children could walk I have taken them berry-picking, and as they’ve grown older we’ve discussed the advantages of wild-grown, pesticide-free, zero-carbon fruit. So here I stand with a load of wild-grown, pesticide-free, zero-carbon, rock-hard fruit, and I must make something edible of it if it costs me a week’s struggle.

I laboriously cut and peeled the largest of the hoard and made an apple crumble. I added a few more, cored but unpeeled, to homemade fruit smoothies—not too many, because of their acidity. A week or so passed as more bags of tiny apples piled up at the kitchen door. Finally I hit upon the idea I’ve used ever since: core the apples, boil them with sugar and put them through the food processor, skins and all. I use some of the puree for pies, combined with blackberries or plums, and I freeze the rest. It’s a year’s worth of apple crumbles and cinnamon-apple cakes.

Thank you, squidgelet. It was difficult, and it took some work on my part, but I’m building quite a reputation for the distinctive appley flavours in my home baking.

~ Fiona Jones

MLS Micro Fiction Anthology, Volume One

Thanks

Thank you for reading this blog, if you’d like to read more of our short or micro stories,  click here & if you’d like to submit your own story for consideration, please see our submissions page for details.

Plus, don’t forget to sign up to our mailing list to get all the latest stories, news & promos (including writing & giveaway competitions), plus you’ll receive a FREE ebook exclusive to our email subscribers.

Get your FREE Ebook

The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

ebook button