Patrick M. Ohana
Bio
A medical writer who reads and writes fiction and some nonfiction, although the latter may appear at times like the former. https://patrick-m-ohana.anthi-and-m.com
Stories (258/0)
Bomb Shelter Pet
My fifteenth year presented me with a forgotten friend. I found her one morning, practically starving, having been accidentally imprisoned in the building’s bomb shelter. She was only a few months old, and readily adopted my petting hand. I brought her some food and thus found myself, once again, the caregiver of my favourite creature.
By Patrick M. Ohana7 months ago in Families
A Soul's Space
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Souls can. Well, at least mine could, and it will anew when I get the chance to travel through space again. We were handed a sabbatical away from space, except that it means nine years here. Most call it, Heaven, but I deem it a dull Hell, where fires have been replaced by waterfalls. I have nothing against water falling à la Niagara and other such monumental cascades, but all the time, everywhere, forever become deadening, even to a soul, at least mine. I often wonder about Milton's words in Paradise Lost: Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. 'Tis better to be dead, I think, most of the time.
By Patrick M. Ohana8 months ago in Fiction
A Soul's Train
A soul's train always stops for death. Carriages were used before trains, and walking, and or running, was the only mode for a soul before such wagons, although a horse or an ass could have been readily available for such a voyage. Are there soul planes nowadays, with their own control towers and airports? Luggage carousels and claims are surely not required, pilots and flight attendants must be dead or dreaming, and security must be lax.
By Patrick M. Ohana8 months ago in Fiction
A Soul's Strings
The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. To be more precise, it only appeared to be burning. It was a reflection of a burning candle, although the real candle was nowhere to be found. This is actually the middle of the story, since I always prefer to start midway between the Right and the Left; I mean the beginning and the end. Every nation should aspire to have a centrist government. Did I digress already? I tend to do that, so please, bare with me some of your patience. It tends to offer a dividend, usually at the end. "Come on, M!" I am sorry for the author's intrusion, but I am the narrator, and I can tell you from the get-go that I digress a lot. It may break the rhythm, but I think that a good beat has to be severed to add more tension. This is a song, after all, with several strings as far as I can see.
By Patrick M. Ohana8 months ago in Criminal
My Father's Fingernails
I believed that I had to die in order to stop suffering from the death of my father. I remember telling my future wife sometime after we had met that I wanted to die before my parents, refusing to suffer their loss. I probably only meant that for my father: the man who held my hand at less than three years of age when we disembarked from the boat that brought us to our new home, the man who always tasted the melon first before sharing it with his three remaining children and his wife, the man who let me enjoy the touch of his calloused hands and yellowing fingernails, the man who secretly ate the tasty homemade pastries and fresh seasonal fruits and blamed it on me when reproached by his domineering wife, the man who worked for the army and returned home early to take care of me, the man who knew how to cook a mean spaghetti, the man who taught me by example to seek peace and quiet, the man I painfully loved even when he became difficult to deal with following his drawn-out struggle with Alzheimer’s disease, the man whose smile could light up any room including his private one in the nursing home, the man I lost at the tender age of 89. Is this all I could remember of the forty years of having a father? No! It is only a simple synopsis of all those years, a broad overview of four decades, a would-be writer’s whimper.
By Patrick M. Ohana9 months ago in Families
