All Stories, General Fiction

The Potato Man by Leigh-Anne Burley

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Through thick, black-rimmed glasses, Irvington Hayes stared at three starlings perched on a telephone wire outside Birch and Birch, the accounting firm where he had spent his working life for the past 20 years. Each day, Irv occupied the same worn wooden bench, eating the same predictable lunch: a bologna-and-cheese sandwich on Wonder Bread, a carrot, and a Macintosh apple, washed down with a carton of Borden’s milk. He saw no need for change. Punctual to the second, Irv brushed crumbs off his ill-fitting brown suit and re-entered the gray, three-story office building for another routine day.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Taking the Plunge by M.A.B. Lee

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It wasn’t on my mind to kill him, just shut his mouth for a bit. A body needs peace and quiet sometimes. The plunger was right there handy and I picked it up and stuck it over his mouth. It stuck real good, too, I didn’t expect that. Carlton turned red as a beet and before he could pull it off, he keeled over dead. If people knew how dangerous these things were they wouldn’t sell them just anywhere.

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Short Fiction

Sunday Whatever – An essay by Geraint Jonathan – Shakespeare the Tease (Or, The Rest is Scilens)

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It’s somehow apt that among Shakespeare’s most idiosyncratic spellings is his rendering the word ‘silence’ as ‘scilens’. No other writer of the period is known to have spelt the word in this way. It appears in the printed plays and it appears in the manuscript of Sir Thomas More, a collaborative work written in six different hands, one of which, referred to by paleographers as ‘Hand D, is thought to be Shakespeare’s. There’s good evidence to back it up: quite apart from the distinctive spellings, the handwriting seems consistent with that of his various signatures.

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Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 598 – Spread Your Wings And Ragdoll Too, Crap Cocaine And Mr Bowman Would Have Had Their Backs.

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PLEASE NOTE – WE HAVE BEEN HAVING TROUBLE WITH THE SITE FOR THE LAST THREE DAYS SO WE ARE NOT WORKING THE WAY THAT WE NORMALLY DO. HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE SORTED SOON – Hugh, Diane, Leila.

Week 598 has arrived!!

I’ll leave the lists to Leila but I realised this week that I have a few tunes that I go back to when I need to calm down.

Strangely, my favourite one is one of the last that I’ll ever hear. Well that’s not true as I’ll be being cremated. Maybe it will calm my being / spirit / soul or the fuck all that I’ll have become. Weirdly it’s a piece of classical music. I don’t know much about classical but there are a few pieces that I enjoy. I will be accompanied into the after-life or the fuck all there with Delibes ‘Flower Duet.’

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All Stories, General Fiction

An Arrangement by Kenneth N. Margolin

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Darlene’s husband, Warren Mason, sells his lumber company for twenty million dollars. They build a forty-five hundred square foot deck house on thirty wooded acres bounded by three hundred acres of conservation land in rural North Carolina and plan to grow old amidst the trees. Five years after they build the house, while cutting down a diseased tree, Warren collapses and dies. Darlene considers moving closer to town, but cannot bear the thought of leaving the birds, the deer, the unseen creatures that forage through the woodlands and visit her backyard. At eighty-three years old, Darlene resolves to live and die in her beloved home.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Twolips by Gerry Coleman

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“A dream fulfilled is a dream lost.” 
                                                                          —Mickey Lafferty

The year Rosemarie Zuccarrelli moved away from Ninety Second Street to live with her maternal relatives in the Midwest, we were thirteen.

She quickly metastasized into likenesses and lies, was diluted by adaptations and revisions I fabricated to fill forward the missing frames. I did what most teenaged boys did: I played sports, pushed my luck with inaccessible girls, snuck beers, and cheated on tests. I wrote poems. Spare poems I did not share, poems touching upon alienation and nothingness, the depths of the surrounding black and unyielding ocean, and the silence of God in the world.

I idolized her.

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Fantasy, Humour, Short Fiction

The Oz Solution by Leila Allison

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The Lernaean Hydra of Greek mythology has no set number of heads. Whatever the word in ancient Greek meaning “a buttload” applies to the noggin total of the belligerent Sea Monster, whose dispatch was the Second Labor of Hercules. But the previously Romanized version of the Hydra that recently arrived in Saragun Springs has just four heads–Vicki Beckious, Nikki Nolteious, The Situationious and Zippy-the-Pinheadious–but considering that they tend to talk at the same time, four is enough.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Last Number by Arpi Vanyan

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She had done the same thing every evening for three years.

She would pour tea into a cup with a chipped rim, sit by the window, pick up her phone, and dial a number.

The same voice, every time.

“The number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Resurrection Blues by Joel Bryant

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After the break-up of Dystopian Dentist, I immediately decided to form a new band. Screw those other guys, holding me back, crushing my artistic vision.

I was looking to move to a more blues sound, which made me immediately think of bringing in Croydon Dan. He was the only string slinger I coveted. Cat played like he’d been born in the Deep South, not South London. We’d lost touch over the years, so imagine my major dismay when I found out that Dan was pushing up the daisies. I never did discover how, but the dude did have issues. Still losing him was a massive bummer. He’d have been perfect; music was in his bones. Weird to think that would soon be the only thing left of him.

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