story cover with salt ocean stormy cliff

“Salt” – Free e-Story

Karin Kallmaker Book News, Short Stories

story cover with salt ocean stormy cliff

The normal rules of search algorithms advise against the use of quotation marks in titles of blogs. In this case, I believe they are necessary. It’s not a salt-free e-story. It’s Salt, a free e-story at my web store.

HAVE A TASTE of SALT

I wrote Salt under the pen name of Laura Adams for the Naiad Press anthology The Touch of Her Hand. The story is a single voice grieving over a broken relationship at the moment her ex introduces her to the new young girlfriend. It ends with a bitter grimace of schadenfreude that is all the happiness the heartsick woman can muster in the moment. I think it’s a moment in life that many of us can relate to.

Here’s a snippet:

As the water evaporates from my cheeks the salt remains on my skin just as you remain in the deep recesses I cannot clean. I could scrub with soap and the salt would still be there. I scrub your memory with acid and lye and your memory clings ever harder. Salt is, after all, a preservative.

When something is preserved with salt, it’s called “cured.” With so much salt on my skin you’d think I would be. I would be the salt of your earth, but salted earth grows nothing. Salt flats are the purest form of toxic beauty.

You said you loved me and yet you could tell her that we’ve remained friends.

story cover ice and fire cadillac mountain

Salt joins Ice and Fire, an erotic short story I posted on my web store last week, also for free. You didn’t know about Ice and Fire you say? Maybe you’re not on my private mailing list.

This flurry of tasty things at my web store is in celebration of the upcoming release of my new novel Captain of Industry from Bella Books next month. There are different excerpts from Captain of Industry at the back of both of these free e-stories.