Nicole Westerhouse
Bio
I'm thirty.
Damn, that hurts to type, but there it is.
Not much of note.
I suppose I should say "yet."
Makes it sound like I'm going places.
Stories (19/0)
Sweet & Sour
Gary Stewart always smelled vaguely of cinnamon. It didn't matter if he was working into the late hours at his part time job as a grocery stocker or glistening with sweat after a competitive pick up basketball game, the sickly sweet smell always lingered on his skin.
By Nicole Westerhouse3 years ago in Fiction
The Barn Cat
I feel the decaying wood creak and crumble beneath my feet. Despite this, the floor is surprisingly stable. Although long abandoned to the summer storms of Kansas, which blew through broken doors to toss about unfurling hay bales at their mercy, the foundational beams are as strong as the day my father built them. He once prided himself on spotless wooden floors, on a tidy barn free somehow from flies and cobwebs. Now, old grass and mud storm swept from the grounds outside have molded like clay into the cracks between the dusty wood planks, as if they had always belonged there.
By Nicole Westerhouse3 years ago in Fiction
Around the World in 30 Days
Three weeks ago I was stranded near O’Hare in Chicago, Illinois and the only restaurant within walking distance to my hotel was a Vietnamese restaurant. I had never had Vietnamese food before, but I figured that it was better than having to take an Uber or bus out to find something else. So I ate there.
By Nicole Westerhouse3 years ago in Feast
One Day the Birds Will Sing
The world went quiet. Too quiet. Once, a song danced in the wind, but those times are lost. There is no music now. Fingers still over dusted lyres and the troubadours are voiceless. In this age of darkness, what is left to sing about?
By Nicole Westerhouse3 years ago in Fiction
Master of None
I wasn't a kid who dreamed. I'd love to play pretend, I'd be a dinosaur (due to an unhealthy obsession with the Land Before Time) or whatever Disney princess was in vogue that year. Mostly, I just did everything that my sister did, because she was two years older than me, and therefore knew what was cool.
By Nicole Westerhouse3 years ago in Motivation
The "A" Word
Summers in Indiana passed like glaciers. As July began to bleed into the most brutal part of August, we would find ourselves desperate to find solace in any menial passing fantasy. The doldrums of boring brick suburbia left us with nothing else but those fantastical whimsies.
By Nicole Westerhouse3 years ago in Pride