Leila has picked out a real beauty this time. One of our most popular stories by wonderful Nik Eveleigh.
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Week 313 – Speed, Alex O’Hara Was A Knob-End And Trust Me, ‘Old Shep’ Is Worse!
I don’t know why I was wondering how many words a minute I could type. I decided to test myself. I can do around three hundred which I’m led to believe is quite impressive. I was so proud until I found out they all couldn’t be the same word without any spaces. No one appreciates my three hundred ‘a’s.
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The Plea by Craig Dobson
It began when the weather turned. That cold, still brightness had gone. The leaves’ rusted gilt was torn from the trees and scattered across the tumbling grey clouds by the winds that knocked over the bins and beat down the last of the climbing beans in the vegetable patch. The shed’s corrugated roof flapped like a fish, clanging through the night.
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Betty and My Sneakers by Townsend Walker
Betty’s blue sneakers are alongside of the road. My sneakers are red.
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Silent Retrieval by Tom Sheehan
The day had a head start on young Liam Craddock, he could feel it, and all that it promised. Across the years, on the slimmest sheet of air, piggybacking a whole man’s aura on that fleet thinness, he caught the sense of tobacco chaw or toby, mule leather’s hot field abrasion, gunpowder’s trenchant residue, men at confusion. If it wasn’t a battlefield in essence, or scarred battle ranks, he did not know what else it could be. And it carried the burning embers of memory.
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The Last Cigarette by Tim Frank
I had a theory that if I collected enough cigarette boxes and scrutinised the warning pictures – the obscene, grotesque illustrations of the sick and the dying – I would become so repulsed I could finally conquer my addiction. Of course, I knew I would smoke the very cigarettes I had gathered in order to quit. The cure, like chemotherapy fighting a tumour, would be as devastating as the illness. However, I had tried to give up so many times before this felt like my only solution.
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Friend Request by Yash Seyedbagheri
Mom costs me friends. She shows up drunk to my high school functions. Double-fists Merlot at a parent teacher conference. And it happens again at my drama club production of Hamlet, set in a Burger King. Although this time she imbibes Pinot.
Friends’ parents suggest I’m not good company. It’s not me, they claim. They just have to be selective. This is high school, it’s a volatile time for everyone. People are easily influenced.
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Literally Reruns – Memories are Made of This by Diane M. Dickson
Leila has fished out a rather unpleasant character – I thought we’d tied him up in the corner but no – this is what she said:
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Week 312 – True Romance Is Quentin’s Best Work, Alternative Head Cleaning And A Nod To Lives Gone By.
We had Valentine’s Day this week.
If it made you feel all fluffy and unnecessary and gave you inspiration to write a romantic romance to warm the heart, you are welcome to send it hopefully to anywhere else bar us.
(Unless of course it has a sneaky and clever twist that will make us go OOOH – dd)
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The Sisterhood of Nod by Leila Allison
A Day in the Life of 1987
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Ever since it was installed in 1951, the carillon atop the Charleston city courthouse plays a piece of classical music after it chimes noon. On a day long since protected by the statute of limitations, I was waiting out a red light in front of the courthouse when the carillon played the Chopin nocturne featured in The Deer Hunter. Maybe I’ve reached the age where my cultural references are “out of print,” but there’s a special sadness in that melody which always sinks me; yet on that day, when I was twenty-eight, I felt nothing at all.
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