Author: ireneallison12

Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Perry by Dianne Willems

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Dianne Willems’ Perry begins as a daydream that edges in and out of a nightmare reality, and ultimately ends with the ultimate sacrifice. It is a tragedy because life is determined to be a black comedy. Life is loaded with easily discouraged, jaded Superheroes, but very few Perrys. The piece ends the only way it could, yet you never see it coming.

Q: Do you believe that the well meaning You Are Special message, without explaining how everyone can be special, without negating the definition, drives young minds into hopelessness almost as effectively as a poor home life?

Q: I see something Christlike about the Parrot, how his martyrdom brought the flabby heroes back into shape. Do you agree?

Leila

Dianne’s responses

Q: Do you believe that the well meaning You Are Special message, without explaining how everyone can be special, without negating the definition, drives young minds into hopelessness almost as effectively as a poor home life?

Q1: I am less familiar with the ‘You Are Special’ message (I think it’s a cultural thing, here in the Netherlands there’s more of a calvinistic attitude), but I have some thoughts about the ambitious ‘aim for the stars’/’be the best’ message some people try to install in their children. However, regarding the Parrot, I think he is more about trying to gain some control over a chaotic life. And being a hero, because his family did the exact opposite of installing in him the ‘aim for the stars’ OR ‘you are special’ attitude. So he tried extra hard, regardless of cost, to be someone special. 

Q: I see something Christlike about the Parrot, how his martyrdom brought the flabby heroes back into shape. Do you agree?

Q2: Having grown up in an almost completely atheist environment I haven’t nearly enough knowledge about Jesus to have drawn this parallel. However, I think the question should be, did the Parrot bring the flabby heroes back into shape? Or was that one last desperate fantasy as he lay dying? 

Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – the Bee by Rebecca Moretti.

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Although justice usually arrives pretty damn late, it can show via any avatar. For the evil willingly participated in by Lazlo Lachman, there is no suitable punishment. For crimes against humanity, even hell feels insufficient. So, maybe causing him to go mad, to shove him into himself with only a buzz for input is as good a penalty as any. Such is the soul of The Bee by Rebecca Moretti.

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

Week 399: A Tribute to Dark and Stormy Knights and Another Week That Is

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As we get closer to Halloween I find myself thinking of the darker side of the human heart. But instead of making a list of horror films and actors (which I have done before), I would like to salute the Evil Bad Guys* of Film and TV, for they are the ones who make stuff worth watching. (I use the word “Guys” in the unisex form–for I do not care for “Gals.”)

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Revolving Doors by Sharon Frame Gay

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Something got in the way should apply only to happiness. I’d rather be a happy peasant than a genuinely depressed monarch. So in that regard it doesn’t matter if you are working the door or have it held open for you.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 398: Positive Thinking; The Week In Rocktober and Sing, Little One, Sing Like the Wind

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Positive Thinking

We will celebrate our eighth anniversary next month. Anniversaries and birthdays usually make me queasy because I view each as another item to be checked off a Great To Do List whose final task is “Die.” But I will allow that there is maybe, perhaps, seemingly and possibly an element in my personality that could be improved by wise advice, Vitamin Jesus or even a sunnier attitude brought about by better chemistry.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Humour, Romance, Short Fiction

The Caretaker’s Cottage by Leila Allison

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-Prologue-

Ineffable Is As Ineffable Does

With a peaked roof topped by a small brass eagle, the “Caretaker’s Cottage” in New Town Cemetery is a seven-by-nine rectangle that stands long side up. A few years back the City of Charleston had money left over in the Parks Department budget; two thousand dollars was allotted for the creation of ten incomprehensibly cheap signs to mark various “historical sites” throughout town. It was one of those mystifying expenditures that governments make to discourage the expectation of competence. One of the signs stands in front of the rectangle. It says: “Former Caretaker’s Cottage.”

Outside being the ancestral home to untold generations of Grey Squirrels, the building is a tool shed added decades after the cemetery was founded in 1902. New Town did have a live-in caretaker once, but he dwelled in a long since razed house that stood at the foot of the hill in which the cemetery is seated. But the extremely typical Charleston city employee tasked with the sign job had to put something on the one set aside for the cemetery–so she pulled a fiction from where the sun never rises and literally engaged a sign maker (her fiance–who reaped a thousand percent profit). In fact, nine of the ten signs placed throughout Charleston are similarly procured fictions–with the other being only true about Hartsville, Tennessee–the boyfriend sign maker’s hometown.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns -Retinitis Pigmentosa by Tobias Haglund

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Right now it is Tuesday, 31 May 2022, 1:51 A.M. PDT in the Puget Sound region in the U.S.A. Due to some slow typing, errors and the run of time itself it is now 1:54, but all the other conditions are the same. Several months will pass before this is read on a Sunday morning. And, as always, people such as I, will operate on the assumption that the world will still be here and everyone we know is still in it in the relatively near future.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 396: Stumbling Leaves; Another Week That Is; Autumnal Vexations

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I like fall, but I avoid saying “I like autumn.” I went to school with a girl with that name and hated her. I wouldn’t want the little god whose job it is to check up on the likes and dislikes of people like me to get confused. So, to be clear, I like autumn, but not the Autumn I knew in seventh grade.

But there are things about fall I can do without; for instance, grownups who wear “onesies,” and those who get as excited as a three-year-old seeing Santa for the first time when the subject is “pumpkin spice.” Usually these people are one and the same. I will hear no defense for normal adults who wear onesies with little fire trucks and/or race cars, Bunnies, Unicorns, Cows, Green Aliens and Sea “Horseys” on them and must tell me about it. What you do at home is your own business, but unless you want me to wonder if you wear a “dype-dype” and rubber panties to bed, don’t bring it up, especially if I am eating.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Whatever It Is, I’m Against It by Leila Allison

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I entered my building’s courtyard at dawn on a clear, cold November morning. I brought a bowl of tuna and a cat trap. I placed the bowl at a specific spot under one of the two box hedges that lined the walk and laid the trap nearby. Every morning I brought food to the same place; it was the trap’s only appearance.

I’d come for the benefit of a feline warlord in winter named Lemmy. I’d been feeding Lemmy on the sly ever since I first met him in the courtyard at least three years ago. Obviously feral, I appreciated the defiance in his attitude that wouldn’t allow him to beg. Oh, he certainly gobbled down what I gave him and shamelessly came back for more–but not once had he ever sought pity.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Wingsy by Tom Sheehan

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Every day I have submissions to read, stuff to write and books to catch up on. When I get tired I often catch myself skimming along the top of a piece, usually due to the false perception of overload. For I imagine that I am being driven, but that’s not true. I keep telling myself that the world is an increasingly hectic place, with too little time for careful reading. I believe the first person to say that was probably confronted by two wall paintings to review for the Hunter-Gatherer Digest.

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