Bru Benson’s Writing Excerpts

“I only wore shoes for Sunday church or in the winter. Today wasn’t Sunday and this hot July evening sure wasn’t winter. But it would have been just as hard to cross the swamp without them.” WISHBONE HANNAH Middle Grade Historical Fiction ages 8-12yo

“Alexander, a boy of ten, ran past Mr. Weed’s grocery store and down the alleyway, wearing his good brown church shoes, for it was Sunday noon and the congregation had just let out minutes ago. The pockets of his newly ironed blue dress pants were stuffed with wadded one-dollar bills, all five of them, he took from his hidden cigar box underneath his bed at home.” SHOOTING DICE WITH THE SHOESHINE BOYS Adult Thriller

Dibbles the barn cat saw them first, her favorite sugar cookies in the bakery window. “I like chocolate chip cookies,” Wiscowski, her best cow friend, said. “I like to dunk them in milk.”-DIBBLES & WISCOWSKI “GOING TO BUY A COOKIE” Picture book ages 3-8 yo

Published: Issue 2 Dribble Drabble Review (… complete story arcs achieved in mere 50 and 100 words are nothing short of exemplary.)

Boys Will Be Boys

by Bru Benson, USA

They smelled of garlic and cheese, both sitting at the table with great big grins. Bread crusts disemboweled on plates of half-eaten food. The children’s tummies were so full and fat, their shirts wouldn’t meet their waistbands. Fat full children each with halos, until father came home. Then everything changed.

The Trees Have Eyes

After downsizing twenty years of accumulation in my basement; worn clothes, mildewed photos, and tarnished jewelry, I went to a nearby wooded park. That’s where I saw two girls’ bikes chained together on a pole next to a running creek. People usually kayak there. The past two weeks the bikes have been there with no movement. I know because I had put sticks between the spokes. The sheriff assured me of no reports; missing girls or hikers finding anything on the accompanying trails. He asked what I thought. I smiled. He didn’t even bother to look up into the trees.