365 Short Stories (Last Post)—Week Fifty-Two

© Oliver Suckling | Dreamstime

This is my last post is my 365 Short Stories series. I fell short of my goal of 365 stories, but not of my vow to post a weekly progress report. (At a word count of 24,100, that’s a novella!) I intended to read another seven stories this week, but the family came in for Christmas and I made a choice to to spend time with them instead of my anthologies.

In my excitement near the beginning of the year I said, “next year I’ll do poems! The year after that, I’ll do es...