Author: Glenn Johnson

This is Day 7 of “7 Stories in 7 Days”. I asked my Facebook followers to give me a line from a favorite song to use as a writing prompt. I have not looked up the context of these lines so any similarity to the actual song is purely coincidental. Thank you for all that participated in offering song lyrics.

It was the week of their 50^th wedding anniversary and Tom had surprised Alice with a trip to New York City. He never was one for the bustle of the big cities but Alice had always wanted to do all the things you can only do in NYC. So far they had already seen a Broadway show, visited the Statue of Liberty and toured Ellis Island, walked through the 9/11 Memorial, and strolled down Times Square after dark.

Today is Friday, the date of their wedding anniversary. Tom had already surprised Alice this morning with brunch at The Loeb Boathouse in Central Park. For their final treat, Tom had made dinner reservations at The Carlyle Restaurant, a place Alice had read about many years ago and had dreamed of going. Tom had the Lobster Thermidor and Alice ordered the Roast Prime Ribs of Beef au Jus. They shared a bottle of their favorite Hauck Cellars wine, and finished off by sharing the Cherries Jubilee.

After dinner, Alice suggested they take a walk through Central Park. As they were walking hand-in-hand they happened up on a street musician. He was smartly dressed and had a portable keyboard. He asked them if they had a favorite tune. “Sure,” Tom replied. “Can you play Frank Sinatra’s ‘The Way You Look Tonight’?”

“Absolutely.” The musician responded and started playing the song, singing along, sounding just like Frank, himself. Tom held out his hand toward Alice. She reached over and took it and they danced arm in arm, listening to the music. “You remember, Alice, this is the song we danced to 50 years ago tonight.” “Yes, dear, and tonight we’re walking through the park, dancing in the dark and reminiscing.”

This is Day 6 of “7 Stories in 7 Days”. I asked my Facebook followers to give me a line from a favorite song to use as a writing prompt. I have not looked up the context of these lines so any similarity to the actual song is purely coincidental.

Ginny and Craig had been high school sweethearts. It wasn’t the combination you might expect to last this long. Craig was the President of the school Science Club while Ginny was a mainstay on the Robotics Team. Craig was confident in his mental capabilities but was bashful around girls. Their first date had been the Sadie Hawkins Dance but only because of the tradition for the girls to ask the guys out. From that first dance on, they were practically inseparable.

They both graduated high school with honors and were awarded academic scholarships to MIT. Craig eventually earned his Master’s degree in jet propulsion while Ginny got her Master’s in artificial intelligence. When they were both granted positions in the Doctorate program at Georgia Tech, they decided it was time for marriage.

The world had become an ugly place to live. After the US Presidential elections in 2016 and then England dropping out of the EU shortly thereafter, the world economy collapsed. Al Qaeda strengthened their offensive strategies and mounted a concerted take-over of the Middle East with promises to expand even further. The US Congress voted to institute Marshall Law and suspended the Constitution. Private sector jobs steadily declined as the only growth opportunities were now within the government controlled regime. Ginny and Craig considered themselves fortunate, having landed lucrative positions within the NATTO, the North American Time Travel Organization. Great strides had been made in time travel with test trips going back 1 or 2 weeks almost becoming routine. A plan has hatched within the organization to travel back to 2016, change the outcome of the US Presidential election and to keep England ensconced within the European Union.

Craig and Ginny had been awarded one of the few child birthing certificates released in 2025. The government had decided to limit childbirth in an attempt to relieve some of the burden on the floundering social programs. A side effect that was also expected was a brighter generation, capable of leading the country out of its depression. Craig and Ginny, though, had already decided they would not be responsible for bringing a child into this world full of chaos.

Time travel so far had been performed merely as observers. The underlying code of conduct of the NATTO was “Leave no Trace” and any attempt to alter the course of history was expressly forbidden. There were still questions about what the effect of altering the past would have on the time-space continuum. It was a strongly held position, but so far untested, that any changes to history would have catastrophic consequences with a likely outcome of death for those responsible. This mission was different. This mission was not to observe but to purposefully change the course of history, under the pretense that it was all for the sake of the welfare of the world. All participants in this mission would know it was likely a one-way trip.

With their vast knowledge, unerring devotion to each other and their fellow man, and with no children at home to tug at heartstrings jeopardizing their decision making processes, Ginny and Craig were selected as part of the 25-person expedition to return to 2016. There would be 2 primary objectives in returning to 2016: assassinate the future winner of the US Presidential election and also assassinate the Chairman of the Bank of England. Ginny and Craig would there solely as mission specialists responsible for systems within the transport vehicle.

The night before the mission launch, all members of the traveling group were gathered for a formal debriefing outlining the entire scope of the mission. The mission commander reiterated “Due to the enormity of the scope of the events that are about to transpire, the future will be irreparably modified. Expect that NATTO will cease to exist as conditions will never be in place for it to be created. The likelihood is great that you will be stranded, unable to return. Once it is discovered who you are and the purpose of your mission, expect to be detained, imprisoned, and likely killed.

Early the next morning, the group entered the time travel capsule and the target date, May 16, 2016, was programmed into the system coordinates on the console. Ginny and Craig glanced at each other, “One week before high school graduation.” Ginny whispered to Craig. Within a few hours of successfully landing in their target zone, every news outlet in the world was running non-stop coverage of both the assassinations in the US and England. Craig looked at Ginny and said “Our mission here is complete. There’s no going back and we are here to stay. We have no allegiance to this ship, it’s time to create our own, new future.” Using the forged documents they were issued in preparation for their travels, they were able to rent a car and return to their home town. There, they would be observers, only, careful not to divulge their true identities.

As the sun set slowly in the west, Ginny reached into her satchel and pulled out a portable camera. She had secretly stashed it away to document any unexpected events. She turned to Craig and said “Let me photograph you in this lighting case it is the last time we may be exactly as we were.”

Within a week they were both apprehended by the FBI, following a paper trail of receipts from the forged credit cards. Already in government custody and charged with high crimes and misdemeanors along with treason, they knew their next date would be with the executioner.

This is Day 5 of “7 Stories in 7 Days”. I asked my Facebook followers to give me a line from a favorite song to use as a writing prompt. I have not looked up the context of these lines so any similarity to the actual song is purely coincidental.

Kenny had had a bad day. It was one of those days where nothing went right. His alarm didn’t go off so he overslept. The milk was sour so he couldn’t prepare the breakfast he wanted. He ran out of gas on the way to work and had to walk over a mile each way from the car to the gas station. He decided to just go ahead and call in sick when he got back to the car. The battery in his cell phone was dead. It was one of those days and it wasn’t even 10 o’clock in the morning, yet.

The events of this day were nothing extraordinary for Kenny. He didn’t go out looking for bad luck, it just seemed to find him. Or maybe Kenny had just gotten to the point where he only expected bad things to happen and he had perfected the art of attracting it to him. Was today the day he would finally do something about it? Kenny’s mother had battled depression her entire life and died while he was in his twenties. His father lost his battle with cancer a month shy of Kenny’s 35th birthday. That was just a couple of months ago.

Kenny had first contemplated suicide in middle school. At 13 years old, there wasn’t much thought about how to do it, more about how much simpler life would be. The irony of that thought wasn’t lost on him even at that young age. High school found him experimenting with drugs, using them as an escape, not just from his own distorted thoughts, but also from the pressures of his abusive mother. By then, each act he developed in his mind for his own demise was more gruesome, more foolproof than the one before. One thing he knew with certainty, once the decision was made to take his life, failure was absolutely not an option.

He graduated high school, barely. When pressured by both parents to attend college, he decided to take a year off from school to ‘find himself’. With his old beat-up sedan his grandfather had given him, a second-hand tent he had bought off eBay, and a couple of hundred dollars he had saved up from his after-school jobs, he took off. With visions of travelling the country, he spent the first night at a public campground at the lake less than 100 miles from his parents’ home. He spent the next 3 months at that campground.

Though he didn’t find direction for his life during his sabbatical, he understood some of his obstacles. He realized his mom worked to make everyone around her miserable to make herself look better in her own eyes. He also knew he wasn’t cut out for the routine and drudgery of college or a ‘normal’ job. He spent the next few years bouncing around from odd job to odd job, often working outside doing construction, lawn maintenance, even garbage collection.

When his mother committed suicide, he thought he was done with the main bad influence on his life. He also witnessed the toll her suicide had taken on everyone she left behind. He hated her for what she had done to him and his father and for taking the chicken’s way out. He thought his mother’s passing would ease his pains. He hoped that he and his dad would mend their differences and bond over her passing. Neither happened as his father turned to alcohol to fill his void. He became even more abusive, but Kenny had no other place to go.

After the ravages of alcohol and cancer had claimed his father, Kenny was forced into the life he had tried so hard to avoid. He needed the steady employment and the steady income to stay ahead of the bills. But, as always, problems just kept pummeling Kenny. Today’s problems with the alarm clock, milk, gas, and cell phone had become a way of life – Kenny’s way of life. It had to stop.

He drove back to the gas station and filled the car up using his dad’s credit card. He then drove home and pulled out the hand gun he had found in his father’s nightstand as he was going through the house after his death. It was time to go to the most peaceful place Kenny knew and create the everlasting peace he would never have to worry about returning from. Kenny drove to the lake he had spent the summer at so many years ago. He had found answers there before, now he would answer his final question. He arrived at the familiar campground, still deserted in May before the summer recess had begun. He hadn’t brought the tent because he knew he wouldn’t be needing it. He sat there on the bank, taking in all there was around him. The colors seemed much deeper, the sounds fuller, the smells sweeter. The breeze brushed against the hairs on his arms sending chills all over his body. He had never felt more alive.

Daylight turned to dusk, dusk to dark, and Kenny sat there, breathing in all that he could contain. In the early morning hours, he walked over to the car and pulled out a notebook and a pen. Sitting back down on the bank, overlooking the lake, he wrote “Stars are shining on the water here tonight, it’s good for the soul when there’s not a Soul in sight.”

Police found his body two days later, a single gunshot to his right temple, the notebook laying on the ground beside him.

This is Day 4 of “7 Stories in 7 Days”. I asked my Facebook followers to give me a line from a favorite song to use as a writing prompt. I have not looked up the context of these lines so any similarity to the actual song is purely coincidental.

It was their first anniversary and the young couple was sitting on the sofa reminiscing about their wedding a year prior. Leafing through the photo album and turning to the photo of them kissing, she turned to him and said “We keep this love in a photograph, we have these memories for ourselves.” He sat there, studying her as he thought back to that moment.

“No, this photo hold no love, it holds no memories.It is nothing more than a snapshot in time. You can walk into most any antique store and find old framed portraits hanging on the walls. Those pictures are no different than this one you are holding in your lap, a photographic image printed on paper. Those photos on the wall may hold history, but there is no love or memories there. It is no different than, say, the Declaration of Independence. I’m sure all those involved in the creation and signing of arguably the most important document in US history had many emotions and memories associated with that process. Can we experience those emotions today? No. Can we share in those memories today? No. Can we appreciate the effort and the history contained on that single sheet of paper? Absolutely.

“Memories and emotions are a living, breathing thing.Inanimate objects don’t hold them. They may help evoke memories and feelings associated with them, but they are memories and feelings you already have. I’ve heard people interviewed on the TV news after surviving a catastrophic house fire. How often do they say something like ‘we lost a lifetime of memories in that fire”? They may have lost every tangible possession they owned, but they still have their memories and the emotions that go along with them. That’s why I have so much empathy for those suffereing from Alzheimer’s and dementia, I think it far worse to lose all memories than losing possessions.

“I cherish these pictures of our wedding day. I hope we are able to look back on them in our old age. But what I cherish more is the love I have for you and the memories of that day that I hold in my heart.”

This is Day 3 of “7 Stories in 7 Days”. I asked my Facebook followers to give me a line from a favorite song to use as a writing prompt. I have not looked up the context of these lines so any similarity to the actual song is purely coincidental.

Santa gets all the credit
Though we elves do all the work.
The boys and girls adore him.
To us, he’s just a jerk.

You would think that Christmas happens
From the work of just one day.
All the songs and stories
Are about Santa and his sleigh.

You can name the reindeer
Though they mostly just play games.
And their pictures are the ones that Santa
Has in his wall of frames.

You think Santa makes the list
Of who’s been bad or nice,
He writes them in his ledger
Then checks them once or twice.

But it’s not him that keeps the tab
Where naughty women live,
I’m the one that keeps that list
And decides what Santa should give.

You never know next Christmas Eve
When you look up in the sky,
I’m the happy elf and I just might stop on by.
I’m Santa’s spy.

This is Day 2 of “7 Stories in 7 Days”. I asked my Facebook followers to give me a line from a favorite song to use as a writing prompt. I have not looked up the context of these lines so any similarity to the actual song is purely coincidental.

From dust we are made and into dust we are destined to return. Is this really what we have to look forward to? Is there life after death? Are there streets of gold waiting for us to stroll in heaven? Or is there something else?

I can imagine a ‘place’ where we all exist, not in the physical form as we know each other here on Earth, but in the non-physical. Some call this heaven, but I think most of those see heaven as a destination only, not as our point of origin. But what if we existed in the non-physical before we were given a physical body? Could it be possible that once we are done with this “bag of bones” we simply return to that non-physical entity? What would the non-physical be like? Many refer to it as “Pure, Positive Energy”. What can we take from this title? Let’s look at each word individually, taken from merriam-webster.com:

• Pure: unmixed with any other matter
• Positive:  indicating, relating to, or characterized by affirmation, addition, inclusion, or presence rather than negation, withholding, or absence
• Energy: a spiritual force

What if we exist in this state of pure, positive energy? All of our needs are met. There is no strife, no conflicts. Wouldn’t it be possible to become complacent where there is no negativity? On the other hand, if all you have ever known is pure, positive energy, are you even aware that negativity even exists? Maybe that’s what our lives in this physical body is all about. We get to experience the contrasts to pure, positive energy. We see hate, anger, cheating, doing without. We experience war, depression, illness and disappointment. I can imagine that moment at death’s door when we leave our physical body to return to the non-physical. What a relief! We relish the thought that we can go back and just go with the flow, nothing to stop our deliberate creation of joy and happiness around us. Until one day, in our complacency, we decide we would like to give the physical form another shot. I’m not sure how we get selected to return to the physical. I can imagine a ‘message board’ stream of thought with impending lives coming up. Who wants to try being a white female in a rural setting? Who wants to take a shot at being a black male born to a single, drug using mother, in a blighted urban setting? Maybe we get to choose the physical life we want to experience, or maybe it is chosen for us. Maybe there’s even other options to experience the physical than those offered here, on Earth. I can imagine floating along in the non-physical, without a care in the world universe, thinking I could have done a better job than I did the last time I was allowed to experience the physical. I would be in that line, shouting “Put me in, coach, I’m ready to play, today.” Popping out into the physical form, I would be knowing but not remembering the non-physical from where I had come, attempting to create a life as close to the pure, positive energy that I had come from.

This is Day 1 of “7 Stories in 7 Days”. I asked my Facebook followers to give me a line from a favorite song to use as a writing prompt. I have not looked up the context of these lines so any similarity to the actual song is purely coincidental.

If it were only that easy, Charlotte thought to herself every time someone offered feel good suggestions to her. No one knows the battles that others fight internally on a daily basis. She has spent a lifetime putting on a false front for everyone else’s benefit. To others, she was the perfect playmate as a child, superior friend and student through school, fabulous wife and mother in adulthood. But nobody understood her internal daemons.

She had seen glimpses of what life could be like – “Should be like” if you asked her. She had many ‘teachers’ explain how simple things could be. “If it were only that easy.” She had gone to self-help seminars. “If it were only that easy.” She owned and had read shelves of self-help books. “If it were only that easy.” She had ended one marriage and thought she had started the next one for all the right reasons, but she constantly questioned herself, her motivation, her decision making skills. She never allowed herself to bask in the successes she had accomplished, mere chalking them up to luck.

She had hit rock bottom. She was filled with despair, total and utter lack of self-confidence, self-worth. Her world was now nothing more than total darkness. She had tried reading, that didn’t help. She had tried journaling, that didn’t help. She meditated, asking quietly for her spirit guide to give her direction. That help didn’t last. What more could she do?

“MAKE ME A WITNESS! TAKE ME OUT OF THIS DARKNESS, OUT OF THIS DOUBT!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. The sound of her own voice in the still of the moment startled her. But she had done something she had never allowed before; she gave her feelings a voice. She gave her anxiety a voice. She gave her angst a voice. She waited for an answer. Nothing came.

In her darkness, in her gloom, she drifted off to sleep, a wondrous, healing slumber. The anxieties that had been following her quieted. The anger she carried, rested. The doubt that enveloped her melted away. She awoke realizing there was nothing more she needed to do, it was simply a matter of allowing herself to be.