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Nails N Screws: A Narrative Fiction

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After the service, Sam and Maggie walked to the cottage and stood under the polished beams of the yurt modeled home. Gran had lived in yurts as a girl, so it seemed only fitting that she designed her cottage to resemble one. Gran mandated that she be buried with her trees behind the property, and the week before the funeral, Sam had clear cut timber, pulled stumps, and fashioned an old wrought iron fence around the new ten-by-ten foot clearing. It was simple, but Maggie thought Gran would have liked that. They stood there in silence, having locked the door behind them. The only light streamed in from the bay window as it caught what remained of the setting sun. The furniture was dated, moth bitten, webbed, and smelled slightly of stale Gatorade. …show more content…

The face of Sam’s small furniture business lived within the apartment of his best and only friend. Jack, a short, bald and square man, lived in the loft above Nails n’ Screws, where he worked as a clerk. Jack swindled jobs from customers, convincing them to hire Sam to complete their weekend building projects. From this, Jack got a small cut of the profit, and Sam was able to keep food on the table. Jack had only ever been to the cottage for dinner once, and at the end of the night, after two too many beers, he tried to kiss Maggie. Leaning over the kitchen table, he grabbed Maggie by the shoulders and tried to pull her close. Instead, Maggie lowered her center of gravity, dropped to the floor and ducked under the table, pulling Jack back over the top. Hearing the old floor boards groan with the suddenness of Jack’s overweight frame, Sam returned from where he was splitting wood to find him passed out in a crumpled heap, and Maggie up against the wall, her cheeks flush. “What a lightweight,” Sam laughed, grabbing Jack by both …show more content…

With a slow and prolonged recovery time, he lost his job. Maggie was a kindergarten teacher and she had managed to save enough money for the two of them to survive for a few years. She left the school to take care of Sam, sold the house to pay off the medical debt, and they moved into Gran’s cottage. The goal was to move back once he recovered completely, but after spending their first winter in the woods, they never left. Maggie grew to love the early mountain air and thought her new connection to nature, and in turn, Gran, made it impossible to leave. Sam thought it was because mortgages were the “utter shits.” The plan they then adopted was to move when the need for a child outweighed the serenity of the wilderness. Sam opened the mouth of the cook-stove and stoked the fire. Moving the coals around, he added another log. Taking Maggie’s que he worked silently, considering how her silence could be born from discontent. Moving towards the table, he grew frustrated as he replaced the condiments in the fridge, trying to think of what he could have done to piss her off. When they moved into the cottage, Sam fell his first ponderosa. Maggie woke up early the next morning and took her time building the fire. She found two logs from the newly formed vertical stack and set to work getting them lit. Closing the swinging door of the potbellied cook-stove,

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