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Short Story : Enveloped

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Enveloped (fiction JLeahy short stories)

9_7
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This is a draft opening of a short story I am working on. I have not decided where the plot is going. I have  a few options and will post more later.

Betty picked up contents of their mailbox. It was only 4pm and she was extremely tired having entered her third trimester last week. Her mother was overseas, and still unhappy at Betty’s choice to keep the baby.

In her Mother’s eyes, Betty was the faltered child, not pursuing the right career or man, having wasted her mother’s precious money and now having a baby at 23 before she had her own income. Her choice to follow arts while keeping her casual job as a Cole’s cashier was beneath her mother’s expectations. Her mother wanted a Law, Business or Accounting Degree – not Arts!

“She thinks just because she herself married a rich man, that I have to do the same, Betty complained to her aunt.

On the other hand, Betty mentioned to her aunt, her younger sister Mina, 22 was exceeding their mother’s expectation with a University degree in business and now engaged to a young engineer from a wealthy family.

Betty has been out of work for three months and already she feared her mother was right – that she needed to find some money quickly. Her mother refused to spare a cent from her own millions.

“Betty must earn it herself, she must work for it”, her mother told her aunt. The house they lived in on the hills in Brookfield belonged to her mother’s multi-millionaire lover. He gifted it to her, after his second divorce was final.

As Betty shuffled white envelopes, bills and junk mail, the young mother-to be wondered how she would pay her bills this month. Amongst the pile she noticed a small yellow aged envelope, stamped and posted in Brisbane. The envelope was addressed to her. Betty examined the back but there was no return address. She looked at the stamp again. She could not think of anyone in Brisbane that would send her a letter, most of her friends contacted her on Facebook or emailed her. The enveloped was marked Monday, January 15, 2013, just two days ago.

14 thoughts on “Short Story : Enveloped”

  1. Love the story, looking forward to more of it! I see how this could go so many different ways. Are you targeting a specific genre? Romance, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Crime, etc?

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    1. Thank you very much Shawn. Target genre, I don’t know. I have not thought about it, but thank you for making me think about that now. I usually just write a story and try to use the narrative structure. (I think of the story – but not who I am writing it for). I have always written non-fiction until I joined this creative writing workshop and started learning to write (in the narrative) better and that was when I began to write fiction. Must learn to think of genre…:)

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    1. Thank you very much Lou. You inspired me in your river opening scene. That story has left vivid scenes in my head. In fact there is a true story (crime) that happened in PNG, (two men on run – approaching river..) but I have not worked on it as a story yet. I knew of the incident in crime reports – the main suspect is still at large. Tell you more one day (may be in a short story). A little story from my ex police days. 🙂

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    1. Thank you my friend – I hope you are well. It’s true! – you can’t beat the mystery envelope. This story was inspired by (tutor) Isabel’s prompt for the week at our Creative Writing Workshop. I have written three stories at least about discovering secrets and news in envelopes and papers and they are always fun.

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