The In-Between Time
A Short Story
Brendan Shea
Mercury Press
No part of this book may be reproduced, recorded or transmitted in any form by any means, without the express written permission of the author, with the exception of a few brief sentences for review purposes.
Text copyright © 2024 by Brendan Shea
Mercury Press, an imprint of Positive Pres
From a collection of short stories I’m writing:
The In-Between Time
The air had a hint of coolness but it was heating up at only 9am. The crows ‘ghalked’ and the birds ‘yipped’ and the others ‘cheaped’. There was a subtle breeze. No, it stopped.
The woodpecker ‘ohd-ohd-ohd-ohd’d’.
She sat on her haunches like a sentry for her master to return. Children and adults hummed their speech in the distance. The last sound was a soft but insistent droning, over silence, punctuated by the ‘yip’ of some bird, and the buzz of some insect or other. It turned out the droning was a generator on a distant glampsite.
I sat in my folding camp chair, with my book and umbrella, wondering quietly what the day would bring.
She ambled over and sat beside me. The ‘sunny girl’ now wanted a bit of shade. My wife huffed, “OK”, in the distance; she’d return with good news: “We can move to a shady campsite” (and be shady folks 
)
