Worth A Thousand Pictures

Shane was going to be a vet. He'd never wanted anything else and he never would. His marks were good enough, even for a scholarship at Western. Which Tony was actively praying for. For now he was working at the animal shelter where he'd volunteered as a kid and he was learning a lot. He was younger than he should officially be for some jobs, but everybody knew him and knew that if he didn't think he could handle something, he'd say so. The shelter staff was just the director, the vet and himself. Everything else was done by volunteers, especially on the weekend. His favourites were Artie and Eloise. Hippies now for like 50 years or something, they had matching long grey braids, and matching heart tattoos on their left hands. They looked after adoptions on the weekend. Busy days, but they were kind and warm and absolutely impossible with paperwork. One time, Artie had actually filled in a form upside down. Shane thought it mu...

At 10 minutes to midnight, Meg was sitting in the safest place she could find. On the couch in front of the TV, wedged between the armrest and an extremely affectionate young couple. She figured she was inaccessible. She'd spent the evening dodging the optimistic Ed. A friend of Joyce's from work who Meg had heard quite enough about over the last while. "You'd really like him!" Ug. Joyce had invited them both to her New Year's Eve party, and Ed had decided, after a few martinis, that he did, indeed like Meg. And with midnight looming, she wasn't going to be in kissing range. Not that there was anything wrong with Ed, she just didn't appreciate being set up and wasn't going to play. As long as the affectionate couple stayed affectionate, she figured she was safe. She balanced her drink on the armrest, laid her head back on the cushion and relaxed a bit. And yawned. She realized how tired she was. The TV was set to Tim...

This was Tony's first Christmas on his own for, well, ever, really. He'd been with his parents for the first 25 or so, then with Meg. Last year Shane had been here, then off to Meg's for New Year's. So this was his first real bachelor Christmas and he was determined that it wouldn't suck.  He was going to decorate, and play some tunes, and eat Nanaimo bars and gingerbread. Christmas Eve was taken care of. He'd found a sign-up sheet on the bulletin board at work for a charity hockey game. One of those 24 hour things to raise money for the hospital. A few guys had already signed on, and Tony thought it sounded fun. He hadn't played in a few years but he'd been pretty good in his day.   Then, he'd been having coffee with Walt and telling him about the game and Walt asked, "What are you doing Christmas Day?" "Don't know yet." "Neither do I. We should do something together!" "Sounds...