General Fiction, Short Fiction

When the Railroad Comes by Leila Allison

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1985

There comes a moment when God stops everything and shines the Big Light on you. You’re presented with a problem that has no solution, and doing nothing isn’t possible. When that first happened to me in 1985, I learned the truth: the closer you get to God, the further you are from your humanity. I have yet to decide if that’s sarcasm, irony, or the wages of being holy. But none of it mattered at that moment. It was up to me to select the least shitty course of action, and I had to choose now.

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All Stories, Science Fiction

For the Good of the Company by Chaz Osburn

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When news broke this morning that the Chloe Dunham, the largest and most powerful freighter in our company’s fleet of intergalactic transporters, had disappeared following an intense storm in the Outer Belt, I did what any good chief executive officer would do. I called a press conference.

You don’t get to be a president of one of the largest mining and exploration businesses in the sector without being pro-active. I was thinking of my company’s reputation. Over the years I had attended countless media training sessions—this is a dangerous business—and I knew it was my job to get out in front of the story and do everything in my power to control the narrative. That’s the only way to negate bad publicity.

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All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever: The Faith So Great by Dale Barrigar

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“My cup runneth over.” – David

Many who love Leonard Cohen and his most famous song, “Hallelujah,” are not aware that the song is a STORY SONG about the biblical character of David.

David is a religious figure for billions of people on the planet; he is, for sure, a historical figure; and he’s considered in this essay as a literary character, mostly.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Humour, Short Fiction

Week 605: Never too Late, Hitler Found Love at 56

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I will open with a stupid “duh” remark: Lots of things have changed in writing in the past fifty years. I’ve been at it that long, but the first ten I was a songwriter. That began with dreamy eyed teen minor chord ditties about things I knew nothing about and eventually devolved into writing drunken snatches of genius (i.e. drunk shite, as they say in Scotland) on anything that would take a pen (I hate pencils, they feel like dirt and their smell makes me sneeze). Then, later, when not too shitty they were matched to a number of beats and a chord pattern. I have probably written two hundred songs in my life and not one of them exists on one sheet of paper. Some were recorded on a demo that someone somewhere probably recorded over a long time ago.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Kicking It by James Blindell

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The match is in full flow, 22 teenagers running around the frozen pitch, a few desperate to get the ball and some desperately hiding from it.   To absolutely nobody’s surprise, we are 2-0 down after ten minutes.  I’m not arsed about the score, though.  It’s the ten minutes thing that’s doing my head in.  80 more bastard minutes of him.  In actual fact, the match will be stopped and an ambulance frantically called before halftime, but who’s to know at this point?

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All Stories, Fantasy, Short Fiction

Insert Coin by Ari Derin

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There is something about the feel of a coin. It’s that cool heavy feeling. I had a year’s worth of Alcoholics Anonymous coins in my pocket, and I jingled them as I walked down this country road.

The concrete road was cracked and unmarked, and the sky was darkening. A few hundred meters ahead stood what looked like an old-timey photo booth.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Attic Room by Cris Aboobaker

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In the dim twilight of Charlie’s bar an old man sat at the counter muttering about the weather. Outside, night winds blew up from the sea, salving the day’s heat still rising from baked pavements. It was too hot the old man said, it was too dry; his bones ached, his bowels didn’t move; John, the barman nodded, wiping glasses with a small towel. The barking laughs of other regulars, the clinking of the pool table, the air conditioner’s hum and Bob Montgomery’s measured voice on the TV lamenting another Red Sox loss mixed with the old man’s mutters.

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All Stories, Fantasy

The Backwaters by Christopher J. Ananias

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Jenny stood at the dingy laundromat’s bulletin board. She wore a bright red Indiana University shirt and jeans. The crude flyer showed five or six stick figures holding hands in a circle. Two suspiciously looked like they had a penis or almost three legs. She smiled and thought, Maybe that’s what I want to see. They danced in bright green crayon slashes of grass in some pagan ritual around a blue gazing-ball. The smiley-face sun, shining from the top right corner, looked sneaky and somehow hateful. Like it was holding its middle sun-finger up just off the page. Black words cut across the lightly shaded blue sky. FORTUNES READ by Sue at Backwaters Salon $50. No Refunds.  

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All Stories, Fantasy

They Say It’s Wonderful by Prin Sairungsri

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In our city, the floodgates are kept shut by a machine powered on human breath. We call it the regulator. It listens to the lungs the same way a metronome listens to music. If rhythm breaks, the gates slip. Then the river takes everything.

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All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever. An Essay – No One But a Blockhead Would by Stephen Silvester

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Why and how and what do we write? This question could (and probably should) be reordered and its verb could equally be changed to paint, sculpt, act, dance … Human beings do these strange things to make their mark, a little stand against the indifferent and inexorable passage of time, and have been doing so, it seems, ever since they could, as has been revealed in distant caves: stencilled hands in Argentina and pictures of pig hunting in Sulawesi. This brings to mind for some reason a discreet headline I spotted years ago in a once reputable newspaper: ‘Carvings twice as old as thought.’ Were they being done instinctively, or was the sub-editor mischievous or sloppy? But the original question was about writing. Does graffiti count? Seen by some as an ugly nuisance, by others as valid self-expression, it can be inane – Kilroy woz ere – or emotionally significant to the inscriber – Jack cartoon heart with an arrow through it Jill – and innocent enough as it competes with similar 2,000-year-old declarations on ancient monuments; the lovers are marking a moment in their own story (or stories if the imagined one takes a new direction). Maybe all writing is about story: the shopping list a snapshot of my diet and tastes at one time; the letter a revelation (or concealment) of how I feel about what’s going on in my life and in the wider world; even the essay exposes thoughts or beliefs that may change the next day. Or maybe it’s even more fundamental than that: the power and promise of the word, the uttering of a certain form of words in the incantations of religion and magic, the straining of a word in select company towards the ineffable. In the beginning was the Word.

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