General Fiction, All Stories

The Sketcher by Townsend Walker

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Jean-Claude loved women. He loved to draw them. At certain times, in certain places. He would position himself in a café at the bottom of a long flight of steps, say those leading down from Sacre Coeur. A location such as this was most promising in spring and summer. The way women’s skirts swayed at their knees. He remembered with great fondness the summer when fashion dictated women wear pleated skirts. His joy seeing the motion of the skirt against the statuary of the descending legs.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Architects of Their Own by Marco Etheridge

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He is standing in a dark place, his own name forgotten, and no memory of how any of this came to be. The man blinks his eyes, senses he is not alone, then sees a shadow figure appearing in front of him. A creature coalesces out of the darkness.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Roxxi by Susan Jean DeFelice

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I have a theory about addiction: Every addict must have one person to shit on. This isn’t necessarily a deliberate thing, but it does seem to be a player in the fabric of existence. Even the death of a lone junkie in an alley will hurt someone somewhere. It’s one of the few items in the Universe that strives for balance.

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Short Fiction

Week 360 – Monday 9.25pm BBC1, Steak Isn’t Toast And, A Survey – Ask As Many Under Forties As You Can ‘Who Or What Was Rosebud?’

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Here we are at Week 360. You’ll need to put up with me for another two postings as I felt guilty that Leila had done the last three. So no sense, no intelligence just my usual pish.

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All Stories, General Fiction

We Do Not Mistrust Each Other Because We Are Armed by Matt Garabedian

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Sergeant Bonham walked the streets of East Berlin, finding a city mired in despair. President Reagan’s words hung fresh on the western side of the Wall. No graffiti marked the eastern side. Razor wire and sniper rifles kept would-be vandals at a distance. His counterparts on this side kept a watchful eye from imposing guard towers, in contrast to the humble structure on the other side of the checkpoint from which he stood his watch. This was an odd way to spend his R&R, but he needed to understand.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Gosh darn it, I’m wet! by Glen Dungan

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Alright fine.

Okay so the rubber duck bobs in the water, ignorant of the vapor steaming from the pool and rising to the banisters and balustrades in the warehouse. It wears a yellow raincoat and holds in a cartoonish way an umbrella inscribed with the words “Gosh darn it, I’m wet!” It drifts in between two pillars of steam, bumping like a lily pad just underneath the nipple of child peddler Marc “The Lobster” Cameron. So fat is the nipple that one might consider it a breast. The tattoo on Marc’s pectoral is further an example of this fact, a strange attempt at a Chinese dragon that might have looked better on a fit body but has since taken the form of Mushu from Mulan. At least I think that is his name. I don’t know. I’ve never seen it. That or the godawful remake. Don’t ask how I have an opinion of a movie I haven’t seen. I just know. Okay. All I’m saying is that this really goes to show that some movies should be immortalized, having already stood the test of time with intergenerational audiences.

But anyway. I digress.

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All Stories, Fantasy

No Good Deed by Marco Etheridge

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An overcast sky spills milk-pale light over a blighted landscape. The light is too weak to shadow the dry-stone walls that run along a potholed lane. The stone walls rise to a vanishing point at the crest of a muddy hill, and over that crest comes the figure of a man.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Leaving Macedonia by David Flynn

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Joe’s body twitched in his bed, as he knew it would.  He hadn’t slept since he left the war zone in Macedonia.  Violent dreams with buckets of blood, screams in the night, these had been predicted in the article he had read.  Now, safe in Amsterdam, he was living the symptoms.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Hundreds of Little Pieces by Rachel Sievers 

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The glass falls from the counter and I find myself sucking in air right before an explosion of small bits of glass and red liquid spill out over the beige tile. I mourn the glass in the aftermath, not that it is anything special, but I hate to waste anything regardless of its obscurity of significance.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Delete Browsing History by Diane M Dickson

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Who doesn’t want to delete unpleasant items from history and replace them with something palatable? It is a common theme in stories, especially in our speedily evolving technology, when it is easy to highlight and trash information we do not particularly care to see. The muse wonders “what if?” in regards to changing reality on a magic machine. It’s already a common theme, but then again, love is a common theme; pain is a common theme; addiction is a common theme; ghosts, vampires, murder, family, war, depression are all common themes. The key is writing a common theme type of piece well, which is a challenge because you have to grab and hold a reader who might feel that s/he has seen it all before.

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