All Comments on 'Burn'

there is no place like a burnt out home. TK U MLJ LV NV

Thanks for sharing.

So you take stories from the news, I saw, almost the same story on the news site months ago and the hubby was caught because the idiot spray painted the house calling out the slut for what she was.

Didn't expect the ending. Figured it was the husband with a great alibi. The twist was with the detective. Too funny. 4*'s. Thanks for the posting.

Pretty good, but I'm a little confused by the use of barrister while referring to the Constitution and Bill of Rights in the same setting.

Barrister is a British English term for what Americans call lawyers or attorneys, but the UK does not have the Bill of Rights.

The only time Americans are likely to hear barrister is on a BBC show on PBS.

I have been waiting for a story where the kids take revenge rather than the husband. I have seen a lot of divorces and it is the kids that suffer the most. I have seen divorces due to cheating and the kids suffer even more shame from that! A husband might be hurt by cheating and divorce but kids are often literally destroyed by it. Even without the divorce, cheating can wipe them out. What kids get from a parent who cheats is a large dose of shame. Shame because half of them are that parent. Half of them is a traitor. They also get it that the cheater not only did not love their other parent, but also did not really love them. Yup them too. The pain inflicted on the family all for the benefit of some thrills and some orgasms is a poor trade unless you do not care about that family - it is simple undeniable math. It is worse for the kid if the cheater is of the opposite sex. Father/daughter, mother/son - these relationships are the earliest basis for most love relationships in the child's future. So, for a kid, or kids to act out makes perfect sense to me. If it were a son, I would expect violence. If it were a daughter I would expect a trap and criminal accusations. We all use what you have to achieve your goals. The sad thing is that these acts only hurt the kids more, as now they have dishonored themselves by turning to crime to achieve their ends.

It seems cheating hurts everyone in the family. Only a select few take care of the problem themselves. Great little tale.

Five Stars

Enjoyed the story but if you are going to use Brit. terminology then you should get the representation properly. Typically, a Solicitor [attorney who does not make Court defenses] would accompany the accused to the police station or a Magistrates Court. The Barrister [Trial Lawyer] would represent the accused in Crown Court.

Haha! Loved that it was the kid in the end.

Good story.

You need to correct punctuation of possessives. Those were distracting to the reader.

Especially enjoyed the attorney putting the cop in his place regarding questioning, his client's movement, and the way they essentially ignored the detectives "evidence." Watch the Ytube video, Never Talk To The Police, and you will get a quick lesson on defensive living. Innocent people need attorneys more than criminals. The criminals already know the law, better than many attorneys.

Thanks for the entertainment. It was good.

Thanks!!

MGM

IF

one views the voting in terms of comparisons to your other work. The descriptor :

"one of the best", then YES, 1000 times, YES!

Cpete, this was one of your best!

And it clearly shows a high watermark for your mastery of the flash tale format.

Thanks very much! Saw your entry, and opened it first, and was DAMN glad I did. This story and my morning coffee were a great way to wake up this AM. I have always appreciated your contributions. But this one really worked for you. You use a clever and original voice to tell the same old sorry tale, and still manage to put in a shocker twist at the end- just for good measure. Bravo! This was well done. And if the worst people can complain about is the "misuse" of a typically english legal term, than that tells me that this story should find you plastered with the shit-eating grin the success from this effort has you rightly deserving to enjoy!

Thanks again. You are one of my favorites here, and I always look forward to your next!

Thanks for sharing.

Seems the smart cop was a little off base. Clever story. I think it would be fair to say that this was, truly, a BTB story. Even if the wife didn't get caught in the fire. Nicely done.

Great story. Really liked the twist at the end - did not see that coming. Well done!

love it, too bad the sickos who wrote on this day would not take a hint and find another pass time like dodging moving cars.

Thanks for the great story. As a retired police officer I appreciate the detective's realistic attitude about chasing real crime.

Real a good story, good reading, holding our interest till the end...4*

To read your stories with pen and paper to write down some of your clever dialogue. Really good story...very entertaining.

This is a great story, except that I keep being stopped mid-phrase by wrong words (e.g., adulteress for adulterous), incorrect or missing punctuation, etc. Having an editor would up your game.

Good story 5***** . I wrote 2 stories where the daughters were one of the weapons of the revenges.

"The Two Wimps" and "Skelleton From The Cupboard: Sarah and Frank" thay are published in two other story collections.

spelling/grammar errors to keep me from awarding 5 stars. An excellent story. When I read the "suit" att'y was our "hero's" brother, I began to wonder if he (suit) might be the son's father. Just realized another thing - the suit had known the suspect for 30 years. How old are the two brothers? TAGS: I won't find this story with a tags search. How about "fire," "beating," "interrogation," "attorney," etc.? I also prefer "cheating wife."

cpete delivers another good story!

The story reads like it is set in the US, but we don't have barristers. England does. Barristers are lawyers liscenced to argue cases in court, where as solicitors are not.

Gooses? Try geese. Good story. Good reading. Writing - O.K. Cheers!

Can't believe people come here to a free site and read stories posted by authors for free and read said stories for free and then bitch about minor grammar problems not caught by editors who volunteer (for free) their time. Read the story and enjoy what the author has to say and the work the editors accomplish and stop sweating the small stuff. If you want perfection stop reading this free stuff and start paying the authors and editors for their work. Me, I enjoyed the story and appreciate the authors efforts and gladly give it a 5.

Quite a different story from what we usually see here.

I liked it very much! Thank you for posting!

You know, that detective and his Lesbian colleague?

I'd like them to be seen working together over in the Non-Erotic section, please.

Well written with excellent plot and ???. 5*

Really writing this story required an imagination and communication skills. It communicates even without proof reading!

That sentence started me laughing, and I chuckled and snickered all the way through the rest of it after that! Great sense of humor as usual, Pete! You, sir, have a gift with words. Keep writing 'em, and I'll keep reading 'em! :D

5 HUGE Stars as usual!

A flash story has all that the reader really needs to know, the rest is assumed or only additional info. I was very impressed. Careless reading brings less than adequate comments. You did great.

...and I liked it, too!

I know a dude who caught his mom cheating when he was a teen.He tried to beat the guy, but the dude was pretty big and broke his arm.It was over ten years ago and he never talked with his mother again.

From time to time, I still see his mother doing errands and she always come to my side to asks how her son is doing.There is guilty all over her face when she asks about him.

CPETE, great story!5stars!

Nice end touch. Great "interview".

Bet the kid hits a homer 😎

considering a Title that could have gone so many directions

"Detective, did you know that Einstein also said the difference between genius and stupidly is that genius has limits?"

Was never said by Einstein.

You even managed to get the text of the erroneous quote wrong. The phrase incorrectly attributed to Einstein is,

"the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits"

The potential jokes that could be spun are endless.

boring... boring....

I'll be forced back into th fray. 2* for the 'plot'.

Average Writer.

Always good to read your work. It was a good reading experience, well written and good characters. The Einstein quotes may not have been correct but they have been attributed to him many times so still good for a Fiction story. It was very much worth time to read. I did not see the end coming so definitely a five stars. Thank you for sharing. Please keep writing and I well keep reading.

an Average Writer can't compete with cpete!!! he jelly. lmao

Burning down the house is way over the top. Honest, I'm sick of exploding scoreboards, sky writing, videos shown on twenty-five foot walls, hooking up with some better looking babe and snorkeling the wife in the mire.

I guess my biggest disappointment was an Ohio story called 'The Game'. It had a great idea, but the last third was about a totally unnecessary pay back using a totally unrealistic setting. I gave that story a five, but the end felt clammy.

You're house burning was like that; off the wall, and ridiculously out of place.

I still gave it a five because I liked all the rest.

Neatly told (with a few spelling mistakes, etc.) and decently short & sharp.

HP

Hubby didn't burn the house, junior did.

thanks for the offering.

as I understand typical flash tales, some elements are intended to be over the top. I agree that those elements you mention are annoying. But I can tolerate those in flash tales where the emphasis is more on an unexpected twist. This story had a few twists, making it an exceptional flash tale. Five stars.

BTB-revenge stories mean that not only the husbands do the BTB revenge!

The best example FrancisMacomber "The Six O'Clock News Slot"....................

... To those who commented that certain elements of the story were over the top: how about 4,486 U.S. soldiers dying and a cost of up to $6 trillion to look for something that reliable intelligence said didn't exist? Caca happens whether it's over the top or not. Great read, please continue. Panther fan.

While Barrister and Solicitor are more commonly used in Great Britain than in the US, and in the US Lawyers GENERALLY perform both functions, that does NOT mean that the terms aren't used in the US, and therefore using them in a US story is NOT wrong.

I thought it was clear that their son was getting his revenge by destroying what his cheating slut of a mother valued most, her possessions rather than her family. I don't think it's out of character for a teenager reacting to that kind of betrayal; and therefore not at all over the top. If it had been the husband I would agree with you.

I hate to say the cheating cunt deserved this but she deserved more. When a son does this, you know he realizes he had to take a side. So he did. The correct one. The loving and faithful father. To hell with that slimy slut.

nice steal to home base

Damn good story.

Enough said.

Don't have to be turned on. They're optional. They don't have to be used for political meandering. I thought the purpose of these were for authors to receive purposeful feedback on their work. Someone earlier commented on grammar/syntax feedback. A lot of authors want to improve themselves. If there's something they don't know, or got wrong, they'll take feedback and come back stronger for it. I applaud them. Then there are others who have said in no uncertain terms that they have no interest in improvement. They will not learn your from you're, period. You look at Cpete's earlier stuff and then his later and the growth is there. It's called "Effort." And it's exemplary. Still makes mistakes? Yeah. And people still Care enough to let him know, as opposed to writing him off as a schlub who'll never learn the difference between "stupidity" and "stupidly."

But some of us were taught friends are people who Tell you you have a booger in your nose. It's the ones who let you walk out Knowing you do but don't say anything that you have to worry about.

Darn good twist, thanks

You know.....I've had a real blast with your Stories over the years. Too ugly to die, blood from a turnip, a well applied set of doberman teeth, my oh my. I'm guessing this kid is related to Pyro Petey.

The dilemma facing divorced father's is well known here in Texas. Yessir, you've got skill!

It's simliar to the common usage in the U.S. Army to call a Chaplain "Padre", even if the Chaplain is not a Catholic priest. I'm a retired lawyer after 36 years in the business and I heard the term "Barrister" on several occasions. Sometimes a non-lawyer called me that (most commonly Army C.I.D. Agents when I was a military prosecutor, and the inference in the circumstances was that it was a term respectfully uttered). In civilian life I have heard the tem again used by law enforcement agents in similar settings. I also heard it used by other lawyers, typically when one lawyer was referring to another and complimenting his legal prowess. My admission to practice law states I am "an attorney and counselor at law". "Attorney", meaning I can represent others and ""counselor at law", meaning I can represent others in a court of law. [Hence the phrase in all the TV shows and movies, "will cousel approach the bench".] Here the term "couselor" approaches the British usage of "barrister", although the U.S. courts do not distinguish as the British do, the "solicitor" in lower courts, and the "barrister" in the Crown Court. To further muddy the waters, in the United States before the unification of the courts of law and courts of equity, I would also have been a "solicitor in chancery".

Subtle short story .... nice little twists .... much, much better than I thought it was going to be.

5*

Short but seemed a lot longer than it was,and boring!

PAYBACK IS A BITCH....

Loved it! Shirt but a great read.

And the story wasn't half bad, either. Lots of dry humor, consequences for the lowlifes, and a satisfying wrap-up at the end. Thanks!

To set the scene, cast doubt, throw suspicion, and leave the reader scratching their head wondering and never knowing for sure who dunnit.

Both of whom must be mid 40s but they've only known each other 30 years?

Adulteress behavior?

Whodunnit? The boy, but it can't be proven. The wife lost her palace, assets, and clothes; her son hates her; her lover is limp and numb; and the GA sponsor has all the family money. Who won?

This was an excellent BTB story where the wife was only hurt by monetary means (her pride and joy house and car were destroyed). Not by the husband but by her own son for what she did to her family. I get rather pissed off when authors tell their kids that they should still love their mother even if she acts like a slut and destroys their family unit! cpete did the right thing in his ending to make it more believeable.

As for Ohio's story called "The Game" which author Carvohi ridicules it for the great ending, it just demonstrates that he, Carvohi, is just a has been author who can only raise himself out of the literary quagmire by putting down better authors like Ohio. The ending in The Game is excellent since the husband just leaves his slut wife after he discovers that she has been having many affairs (20) over the last three years where she tells her lovers that her husband is a cuckold who loves sloppy seconds and cream pies after she goes home! He is so discussed by her actions that he decided that she really ment nothing to him so why talk to her. He just leaves her. The ending has the wife finding him so she can talk about them getting back together which is typical in Carvohi cuckold stories. Carvohi is upset by the ending where the husband has prearranged a more beautiful woman to come out of his bedroom after his wife is finished with her arguments for trying again and this woman then asks him to come back to the bedroom for more loving! This is what pissed off The Great Author Carvohi! Ohio stories are ten times better than Carvohi cuckold crap. Shame on you, Carvohi!

Gave it 5 stars because of the ending. Didn't see it coming.

I see the detective has a problem he is unaware of. His partner, the lesbian, is greatly missed by his wife when she doesn't make dinner? Crap

Good story, with a great ending. I wasn't expecting it to be the son.

ONLY JUST FOUND YOUR STORIES, IMPRESSED SO FAR, GREAT TWIST AT THE END,TOTALLY CAUGHT ME OUT, JUST 5⭐️.

Was that I would have loved to hear the wife bitching and creating excuses.

This story is a solid five point pointy award, just like I'm a solid 5 star idiot for not thinking about the son as the perp! Nice twist!

One of my favorites again. Children don't like cheating moms. Kid was good with the bar though.

Best of three

Great story but please use contractions!

Great story!! Literally BTB!!! 5 STARS!!!

Good one.

Is they often need to pack a lot of items into the story in a short space for impact. Frequently not as much as 'cpete' did here with so much definition, especially the house burning down but the who, what, when and how were set up perfectly. Three very good quotes were included too that matched the story line. So I find myself disagreeing with Carvohi on this one. I assumed that any neighbors homes were far enough away not to be damaged and that it wasn't the cause of any of those wildfires that rage forever every year.

Just some thoughts on Einstein; the genius didn't wear socks because his big toe always wore a hole in them, he couldn't balance a checkbook and he was a serial cheater on both of his wives. He cheated on his first wife with his cousin who became his second wife.

Anyone who says they saw the ending is lying to themselves, the Author and us. Just how well does the female partner and his wife know each other anyway? Could be an interesting Chapter 2, he already knows a crafty attorney-at-law. Mine just called himself a 'Lawyer' and that's what the sign on the outside of the building and his office said. *****'s Signed: BTW

Nothing new worth reading, so I read the old stories that I enjoy so much. This is one of the best.

I agree 100% with 26thNC. Rereading the oldies since all that's posted lately is cuck crap. This too is one of my all time favorites 5⭐.

Too bad the cheaters weren’t there.

I really enjoyed this story, but there was one thing that kept me from giving it a five-rating.

I don't have 30 years of detecting experience -- or even a week -- but there was a discrepancy in the information presented that I had little trouble detecting.

During the interview with the detective, it was stated that the suspect's 401k plan had been cashed-in and then used to prepay his son's university education. Yet in the post-interview conversation between the suspect and his attorney brother, the suspect said his son had been given a "full-ride" sports scholarship by the school -- meaning no tuition or boarding costs for the son.

It doesn't take a deep thinker to realize that one of those two pieces of "information" is almost certainly false. A decent actual detective could easily have discovered the scholarship, and then used its existence to disprove the 401k tale. In the unlikely event that both actually were true, then one would expect that the prepaid funds would have been refunded by the school, which would again make them a "splittable asset" for the divorce.

Still a very good story, but this flaw -- though not fatal -- cost the story one star in my rating.

Low score because no retribution to wife, she was left just fine

There are some really great kids in cpete's stories. This was one of them.

Yes! 5***** That was excellent. I enjoyed that a lot. Thank you.

Disagree with Anonymous from 3 months ago. The wife got what she deserved, nothing. Her lover was left with nothing to offer any weak willed woman and a pissed off wife, the wife had access to empty bank accounts, and there was no insurance to be split with her ex-husband after her tribute museum burned to the ground with all she held dear. She may not have suffered embarrassment but she sure as hell won't enjoy her future life.

Very nice. Thanks for sharing.

Loved it. A surprise ending that works!

Oh, nice twists and turns. It seems no one likes the ex wife….. 5*s

Like it.

[30.09.22]

Hawt, Qwick, Dirty = EXCELLENT!

11/10 Louisville Sluggers!!!!!

AMAZING STORY!!!!

10* Still one of the top 25 LW stories of all time. Great witty plot with just the right amount of burn. Write On!

one of my favorite BTBs.

Class plot and writing.

Perfect!!! 5/5

Short but sweet. You actually got me at the end with sonny-boy. 5 stars.

As ESPN proclaims "An Instant Classic". Very inventive yet the ending is probably one of the saddest I have ever read on Lit. The damage that the son must have felt by his mother's betrayal is enormous and the motivation to destroy his mother's "shrine" to herself immense. I missed this story when it was first published and feel lucky I stumbled upon is today. Thanks Cpete. We miss your contributions to this site.

Doc

i loved this

five stars, and marked