M.J. Benjamin
Bio
English Lit graduate trying to reconnect with her creative enthusiasm after many educational yet spiritually-draining years of academics. Time for something supernatural, fantastical, occasionally maniacal. I welcome the challenge!
Achievements (1)
Stories (5/0)
Saturday Night, at the Vet
Love is ... Panic when I step out into the backyard, wondering what’s taking Otto so long to come in from his bathroom break, only to find him collapsed in the dirt under the plum tree. A sun lover who enjoys nothing more than soaking in the rays—so very unlike me—he can usually be found stretched out on the grass by the goldfish pond. In his younger days, before arthrosis set in, he’d sleep on his back and wouldn’t even twitch as I applied sunscreen to his belly. Ambling into his golden years, he now favors sunbathing on his side, but still needs to be monitored as he’s become more prone to overheating. He never sleeps in the dirt. He doesn’t even like walking on it. To find him belly-flopped in the flowerbed, unable to get up even as I try to lift him to his feet, sends our household into a scramble. We manage to move him onto a blanket and carry him to the car. I sit in the back with Otto because I do not have a travel bench since he is a home bird, like me.
By M.J. Benjamin2 months ago in Petlife
- Top Story - February 2024
- Runner-Up in Misplaced Challenge
DerelictRunner-Up in Misplaced Challenge
The sandy bottom breaks her descent, cushioning her head as her bow scrapes the plunging dune, guiding her cracked hull to follow suite until, finally, her stern, detached but, as always, bringing up the rear, crushes down and nestles perfectly in the fathomed valley, startling the resident Leviathan from its hundred-year slumber. It goes rocketing in a spray of tentacles across the whelmed desert, giant eye rolling over her mangled remains, astonished, before it slips beyond the depthless veil.
By M.J. Benjamin3 months ago in Fiction
The Holdovers
Watching Cory Fowler sniffling out of the corner of her eye, Brook couldn’t think of another person more accident prone. In the short space of time she had been here he had already tripped over the threshold and accidentally knocked a pile of magazines over, not to mention that he had scraped his knees some time ago. It wouldn’t surprise her if he had accidentally walked into the waiting room while looking for the restroom and was now too embarrassed to leave. It’d been fifteen minutes since his clumsy entrance but he remained seated a couple of chairs away from her, dabbing his nose with a sad wad of tissue paper.
By M.J. Benjamin3 months ago in Fiction
