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    Monday Is Winter and Other Stories
    Monday Is Winter and Other Stories
    Monday Is Winter and Other Stories
    Ebook98 pages1 hour

    Monday Is Winter and Other Stories

    By Ann Stratton

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    About this ebook

    In this collection of five stories, you will find out how Tia helps Melina and her friends escape the gulag they were born in; how Eric Wilson keeps himself alive while lost in the desert; how one woman deals with her job and her family despite her son joining a gang; how an encounter at the coffee shop develops into a relationship, and how one traumatized soldier redeems himself in time of trouble.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAnn Stratton
    Release dateJun 25, 2016
    ISBN9781311851031
    Monday Is Winter and Other Stories
    Author

    Ann Stratton

    Ann Stratton started writing at age thirteen with the usual results. After a long stint in fan fiction, honing her skills, she hopes she has gotten better since then. She lives in Southeastern Arizona, trying to juggle all her varied interests. 

    Read more from Ann Stratton

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      Book preview

      Monday Is Winter and Other Stories - Ann Stratton

      Monday Is Winter

      And other stories

      The Smashwords Edition

      Ann Stratton

      A Blind Woman Production publication

      Copyright 2016 Ann Stratton

      Smashwords License notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. It may not be resold or given away. If you want to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each person with whom you want to share it. If you're reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

      * * *

      Disclaimer

      This is a work of fiction, a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance or similarity to any actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

      * * *

      Credits

      Cover courtesy Bigstock Photo www.bigstockphoto.com

      Editing, formatting, and cover design by Ann Stratton

      * * *

      Table of Contents

      Monday Is Winter

      One Last Match

      Shades of Blue

      Tea and Toast

      A Soldier Travels

      Monday Is Winter

      Monday is winter. Thursday is summer. A year’s worth of seasons in a week. We spend Sunday packing the week’s production into trucks for shipping elsewhere and being lectured about how privileged we are to help save the country.

      We don’t look at each other when that comes up. We know how privileged we are. We think about it constantly. Even as we labor through the endless days of tightly managed climate control, tending the crops engineered for rapid growth and maturity, shipping the harvest out through gates none of us would ever pass through again, we think about it. When we collapse in our bunks at night, it is all we think about. We don’t talk about it. Anything we say with our mouths and voices only concerns the work we are doing and whatever responses we need to make to an order.

      That doesn’t mean that there aren’t plans under consideration. Everyone has their own plan to escape, or overthrow our jailers, or keep enough food back to do more than subsist. Most of them are doomed to fatal failure for lack of opportunity or patience or the presence of mind to formulate and carry through a working plan, doomed by the constant desperation and madness and stupidity. Everyone pays close attention to everyone else and takes whatever action is necessary to deal with problems before they became public. There isn’t much inquiry into quiet acts of murder. There is considerable inquiry into disturbing the peace or public violence. All suffer for the behavior of one.

      My niece Melina had been born in the Marching Forward into the Glorious Future Re Education Facility. Her parents had been rounded up after the coup. Somehow they survived long enough to produce her. She wasn’t technically my niece, not by blood, but I had been the one to take her in after they died. I was the only parent she knew. The camp was up to its second generation and soon to be third. Lucy was only the latest in a long line of such victims.

      But Melina was my responsibility, not Lucy. I’d done my best to keep her safe and teach her everything we’d had to give up when we came here. It has not been easy. I have no resources to work from. My memory is often fogged with fatigue and deprivation. Still I managed to raise her to a young woman, stunted by the lack of resources and health care, but otherwise whole of body and mind, despite an infatuation with that Nikolai, another camp orphan.

      Nikolai managed to be darkly handsome and possessed of the passion of youth. He was also too much influenced by Vassily, who considers himself quite the revolutionary. Vassily would have been quietly removed a long time ago if he hadn’t ingratiated himself with the warden. The warden would notice if Vassily disappeared. It’s not good to be noticed.

      But that did not solve the problem of Melina and Nikolai…

      The potting shed, I said to her, passing her in the dining hall with my empty tray. The potting shed is a constant. The crops we grow are engineered for rapid growth and maturity, but they still take the usual amount of time to sprout. Everything has to be separately sprouted in the potting shed and planted by hand. Everyone takes turns in the potting shed. It’s a never ending cycle, sowing seeds into waiting planters, taking the seedlings out to be planted, bringing the empty planters in to be cleaned, filled with soil and reseeded again.

      She stared at me, a small dark girl whose face was all eyes, bundled in the green sweater I had knitted for her out of the cast offs of far too many who didn’t need them anymore. Why, Tia? It’s not my shift yet.

      You can help me. Extra help is always welcome, though no one is allowed to trade shifts.

      All right, Tia. She piled her tray on top of mine. She gave them back to the dishwasher. She followed me out. She really was a good girl, despite her fascination with Nikolai. I might have approved, if Nikolai wasn’t fascinated with Vassily.

      I gave the nod and finger flick to Dom. He followed us too. He would watch out for us while I told Melina what I had to. He’s a good man and a better leader than Vassily thinks he is, the center about which our small group pivots.

      In the potting shed, I went to the cleaning station, where the used planters are cleaned with steam before being refilled and replanted. We can’t use chemicals—our produce has to be all natural—and steam sterilizes better anyway. It’s very dangerous to work with. We suited up before cranking open the boiler feed for the sprayers.

      What did you want to talk to me about, Tia? Melina asked under the roar of the sprayers.

      What has Nikolai told you about getting out of here? A perennial topic. We all think about it.

      She worked over a rack of planters for a moment, rather than answer me right away. He says Vassily has some ideas.

      I have no doubt about that. Vassily is great for spinning ideas, but not so much for figuring out how to make them work. He leaves that for other people. I pulled up the next rack of planters for the sprayer. Which one is Nikolai agreeing with?

      She bit her lip and looked down, as if the steam was getting to her. I knew better. He wants to take over the warden’s office and negotiate with the government.

      I mopped my forehead. Negotiating with the government is what got us here. He will get you killed.

      Melina looked up in startlement and denial. No! No, he wouldn’t! Not ever! This will work!

      Cheryl was a pacifist, who never lifted a finger in violence toward anyone. She asked for increased rations.

      Who’s—? Melina began. She ducked her head as a guard walked past the wash bay. He only looked in, not wanted to get splashed or dampened by the hot steam. He watched us while we cleaned eight racks of the big planters. They’re heavy for a single woman to wrestle, but there were few men on the shift, and none in the steam room. No guard will move to help, no matter how overwhelming the task might be.

      By the time he left, bored, Melina had figured out why I had mentioned Cheryl. I remembered Cheryl. I didn’t agree with her at all. She remained kindly adamant even as we disagreed. I mourned her passing.

      Melina bit her lip. She shoved a planter half her size up on the rack. Between the two of us, we got it settled and balanced for cleaning. It’s not like that. Nikolai says he can get us in to see the warden without trouble and once we have him in custody, we’ll be safe from the guards.

      That’s been done, too. That one had turned out even more badly. All the conspirators and few random passersby had been executed on the parade ground. Interrogations had lasted for months. Our production had

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