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Let’s all have a laugh at humanity, while we still have a sense of humor about ourselves. It’s getting dark out there, my friends, where we make what we call our livings, but here in the room, where we stage our private movies, where we are stars, it’s blindingly brightly lighted by design, mirrored and multiply-reflected, white on pink on stark white sheets and shadows flee before us. Still. We’re funny. Could we be naked and not be funny? Seen in our entirety, with back-story and motives, we’re charming and slightly ridiculous. Our mismatched genes, those cross-wired brains, these farcical downward story arcs make us sympathetic supporting characters if not small heroes, certainly not villains, but from an individual angle, directly overhead from a distance of, say, here to the mirror on the ceiling, we look exactly like the funny animals we are, pink and poignant, poking one another. In the mirror to the side of the bed, I catch a glimpse of a creature that has no business in my fantasy. He’s not at all how I pictured myself just now with my eyes closed playing for romance and yet, he’s doing exactly what I think I’m doing to this gorgeous reflection of you, and yes, you look indisputably fantastic, identical and fine, here and in the mirror, so who’s that stand-in with my haircut, doing such an unconvincing impression of me? Tomorrow we take down all this diminishing glass. We’ll do what we’ve always done. My eyes will be your only mirror, yours mine. We’ll look at each other and find ourselves. And just before we start to laugh, we’ll catch a glimmer of how we’re loved and get a sense of why. Then when we laugh, we’ll laugh until we cry like no animal we know.

Original Copyright March 24, 2007
Revised Copyright April 17, 2026

My Only Darling B—

You can’t imagine how a woman of substance has changed this ranch and all your boys, me included. Our Dulce. Billy brought her, thinking she was his, but all your sons have found reasons to cherish her: soft voice, sharp eye, curves in certain light, each one a feature of you that they must be reminiscing. They think their affection is genuine, but they’ve fallen in love with their mother, or parts of you. Merciful God, I’m sorry, B! I should never have dragged you to a pitiless frontier expecting shelter from this omniscient sky. A man in love has given away half his brain and all of his decency!  When I watch the boys looking at Dulce, I understand where I went wrong. I was defeated by your eyes. Yes, I mean your ass. There, I’ve made you laugh. Since I saw you at that table alone in the café near your school, with my bag of blueprints for building a future far from home and nothing but bankruptcies behind me, any confidence I needed I took from those eyes of yours that did me in. Again, I mean that ass. You ridiculed my pickup line without mercy. But when I called your face expressive, I meant it as a warning that I could tell you would follow me anywhere I wandered to. I should have left you sheltered in a town full of friends, married to whoever you wanted. You could have had anyone, been anyone, instead of disintegrating here on acres of powdered grief, raising boys like livestock, and being The Colonel’s wife. I wish you were here to see her, B—. The boys will have a hard time keeping her from me. I see it in her eyes.

Love, Your Colonel.

Original Copyright © March 13, 2007
Revised Copyright © March 13, 2026

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299-WORD NOVELS

Character, conflict, emotional impact. And sentences! Everything you want in a novel, without one extra syllable.
  1. davidbdale's avatar

    Thank you so much, anhinga, but I wouldn't want to try it without the other 199. —David

  2. davidbdale's avatar
  3. anhinga's avatar

    All you need is 100 words to make an emotional impact. Touching.

  4. Unknown's avatar

    Brilliant, brother. Just simply brilliant.

  5. davidbdale's avatar

    This Very Short Novel has a strong resemblance to Simple Lessons of War from almost 20 years ago, but is…

Behind the Pseudonym

The pen name davidbdale honors my mother Beatrice (Bea) and my father Dale

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