ben woestenburg
Bio
A blue-collar writer, I write stories to entertain myself. I have varied interests, and have a variety of stories. From dragons and dragonslayers, to saints, sinners and everything in between. But for now, I'm trying to build an audience...
Stories (104/0)
JACK OF DIAMONDS
Sonia checked her look in the small compact’s mirror one last time. One last time, she told herself, before turning the key and shutting the engine down. She pulled on the handbrake before touching the corners of her lips and wiping a small smear of lipstick she’d missed the first two times she checked. She had to ask herself if it even mattered anymore.
By ben woestenburg2 years ago in Fiction
JACK OF DIAMONDS
CHAPTER 5 Marlborough was the smallest of the six Manor houses located in an area the locals called Chumley Glen--a wooded area of meandering streams, open meadows of vales and hills, and a host of golden daffodils fluttering and dancing in summer's breeze. It boasted eighteen bedrooms in addition to a salon, a dining room capable of seating forty, a library, music room, and full kitchen. It was what one might label the senior representative of the six. The arbiter of its own local history written in the beams and plaster of countless renovations. It’s own colourful history went back to 1705. The house had been through as many renovations as it had owners. Some claimed the house to be haunted; others, that the walls were too tight. It had hosted all the major celebrities of Europe throughout its history: Handel, Mendelssohn, Litz; Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley; Pope, Defoe, Swift—the anecdotal tales about the house had gone through as many incarnations as it had renovations.
By ben woestenburg2 years ago in Fiction
JACK OF DIAMONDS
Nigel Bannister looked up from the sketch he was working on, watching the hallway closely. He could still hear the echo of the door slamming downstairs. He had the lights dimmed, thinking there was no need having all the lights on, not with everyone at the fair. It was the reason he’d volunteered to stay behind in the first place, to answer the calls coming in—knowing there’d be none because of the fair. It gave him a chance to sketch--something he’d been neglecting for far too long. He wasn’t planning on spending the rest of his life in the middle of Devon. He had his mind set on the London art world. And the only way he’d be noticed was to make a name for himself, and the only way for him to do that, was to paint. But he was easily distracted and soon found himself drawing another picture--a face in the crowd as he liked to call it.
By ben woestenburg2 years ago in Fiction
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER 2 Jenny pulled her dressing gown tighter, sitting in the half darkness of her boudoir. It was cold with the French doors open, but she didn't care. She was staring at her reflection in the bevelled mirror of her dressing table. She was also sipping a large glass of whiskey--neat--wondering where she'd gone wrong with her life. How could she have let herself fall for a man simply because he was in a uniform? How stupidly romantic was she, to think she could fall in love with a man she knew nothing about?
By ben woestenburg2 years ago in Fiction
chapter 24
Sonia parked on a well-worn patch of mud that served as O’Dowd’s driveway—well, used to be his driveway, she thought—feeling slightly guilty having thought it. There was a quick dip and a hole, followed by two weary splashes of mud before the Bentley’s tires rode over a grassy hummock almost black with oil. The grass was uncut and spotty at best. Turning into the driveway, she hoped she wouldn’t get stuck before she had a chance to straighten the steering wheel. Maybe if I had a wider tire, but that’s too much money, she reminded herself. Money was always an issue with her. The War Widow they called her. She knew what her father would say; he’d say it’s nothing more than an extravagance.
By ben woestenburg2 years ago in Fiction
JACK OF DIAMONDS
ii Artie woke up in a sweat. He was quick to tell himself he wasn’t frightened, but the dream had been a little more realistic this time, a little more intense. Disconcerting if you wanted to be honest. Certainly not what he would’ve considered in the way of a childhood reckoning. Not that anyone would ever confuse such a dream with childhood reckonings. The dream had been about the War. A lot of people have vivid memories about the war, he told himself, it’s all a matter of adjusting yourself to those memories. You have to understand that once you’ve gone though it—you lived it, you lived through it, you fought it and ultimately survived…then it can’t hurt you anymore, can it? It was after all, when it came right down to it, just a dream. He’d had them before. Once you get your head around that idea—that, and the fact that you can never die in a dream, he reminded himself—it makes it easier to accept that dreams are not real.
By ben woestenburg2 years ago in Fiction
jack of diamonds
i Ten days after Reggie’s died, Artie was on the train for London. It’d been a difficult time for him—all the dealing with lawyers and the estate—but between the two of them, Claire sorted things out enough to realize Reggie actually owned the property. The more Artie looked into things, the more he realized Reggie had planned very carefully for his future by documenting everything. That came as something of a surprise, considering what he knew about his friend. There was the will, leaving everything to Claire outright, adding that it was for her to do with as she felt inclined—and those were the actual words he’d used—while the lawyer suggested she sell the property right away. He told her that as a woman it was too much for her to take on, and Claire told him she’d have to think about it. He made the mistake of telling her she had two days to make up her mind; she told him he’d be lucky if he had two days before she fired him.
By ben woestenburg3 years ago in Fiction
JACK OF DIAMONDS
iii Chernetsov stood at the side of his wife’s bed looking down at her shattered body. They’d counted…what…he couldn’t even remember how many broken bones they’d told him she had. It was too many to wrap his head around at the moment. Her spleen was damaged, her large intestine perforated—he didn’t even know there was a smaller one—and they took out part of her liver; her kidneys were damaged and one of her lungs had collapsed. Her skull had been fractured when she’d hit the ground. The tears spilled down his rough cheeks unchecked as the doctor tried to explain the details, and the consequences of those details. He wasn’t listening though—not really—he couldn’t hear the man above the roar inside his own head. He wiped the tears off his face with a degree of anger, telling himself it couldn’t possibly have been an accident. He refused to believe it was an accident. In fact, you’d have to convince him that it wasn’t deliberate. Everything that happened over the past ten days and more, was more than he could wish upon any man.
By ben woestenburg3 years ago in Fiction
jack of diamonds
ii Gabrielle sat on a small bench outside the hospital, huddled tight against the cold. Just another late night worker waiting to start her shift, she told herself. And what sort of a job would that be, she asked herself? She had the look of a woman waiting for the sun to drop below the horizon—or so she hoped. She knew there was no knowing what anybody thought if they happened to see her sitting as she was. Her breath came out in small white puffs, only to be lost on the wind like the distant cry of a child. She began blowing on her hands, at the same time looking up at the third story windows of the hospital across the street where the setting sun reflected off the dirty windows. She was wondering if there was any way she could climb up the fire escape without being seen.
By ben woestenburg3 years ago in Fiction