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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

She’s staying at the only good hotel in town, a place I’ve never been, and giving a paper, whatever that means, and wants to see me while she’s here. We’ve never met, but I know things about her I would never ask anyone else. Not sexual, not all of them. She knows me from a very good photo of me and I know her from a photo of her, how good I don’t know yet. On the drive over I try to decide whatever I can say to her. We don’t want to change our lives, either of us, at least not as involves the other. And some of the words we use online I never say out loud. I wish I could email her instead. It gives me time to be someone. I’d say: How dangerous is it not to choose to love the life we’re given! Or: These glimpses of you make me want not you, but to be worthy of you. And wait an endless day for her reply. My car is not to the valet’s liking. He calls me sir with a tone. How long will I be, sir? I look at him, his cap, the brass buttons, the torn ticket he’s offering me in return for my woeful car, the weight of those granite walls behind us, doors revolving with an endless flow of people who know where they’re going, and I’m undone by the machinery of the whole business, by rooms with fresh linens and mini-bars, stacked into towers for other peoples’ husbands and wives to close the doors and work out their identities. Sir? Do you know where you are, sir? I hand him back his ticket stub and drive away from the hotel thinking, I can play this right. She’ll understand.

Original Copyright © February 24, 2007
Revised Copyright © February 27, 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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