As the blizzard raged, inside the cabin an old man sat whispering to the ghost of a long-lost love. Draining the whiskey in his glass, he raised it, slurring, “One more – for her?” Curled by the ebbing fire, his cat lifted her head, blinked and lowered it again without reproach.

Nick Young is a retired award-winning CBS News Correspondent. In addition to 50-Word Stories, writing has appeared in more than two dozen publications including the Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Unconventional Courier, Fiction on the Web, Bookends Review, the Nonconformist Magazine, Sandpiper, the San Antonio Review, Flyover Magazine, Pigeon Review, Fiction Junkies, Typeslash Review, The Best of CaféLit 11 and Vols. I and II of the Writer Shed Stories anthologies. He lives outside Chicago.