Author: ireneallison12

Short Fiction

Week 345: Mister Hisster, Star Turns and Things That Need Inventing

ireneallison12

Mister Hisster

For the past three years I’ve been feeding a “neighborhood cat” I call Mister Hisster (yes, that is him in the header). I figured that by giving him a name I’d eliminate the “stray” stigma. Mister Hisster is a smallish long haired gray tabby, and leads with his right. There is nothing overly tragic about Mister Hisster because he is feral and has no use for the human race, but tolerates me–to a quickly arrived at point. Whenever I place his food at his spot under the boxhedge, I’d better get my hand out of the way awfully damn quick or the next thing I will do with it is open a tube of neosporin.

“Good morning, Mister Hisster. How’s my favorite little son of a bitch today?”

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Jim’s Aunts by Hugh Cron.

ireneallison12

There’s always something that is both hidden and in plain sight at the same time in Hugh Cron’s stories, and Jim’s Aunts definitely has that quality in abundance. Although it is a short piece, all the words tell and the thing that it causes to form early on in the back of your head comes to light with the final sentence–even though it is also open ended.

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Short Fiction

The Wishingwellwraith and the Trade Rats: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical By Leila Allison

ireneallison12

Flo and Andy were a Trade Rat couple who lived at the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert in southern New Mexico. Flo had dug their den (aka “midden”) on an abandoned ranch, close to an old well that had dried up ages ago. Although they weren’t exactly in the desert, the land was thick with mesquite, chaparral, agave cactus and peyote.

Little did the couple know that the ranch had been a hideout for famous bandits and desperados in the nineteenth century. Or so the new owner, who’d recently moved in, claimed. And if Flo and Andy had been cynical Trade Rats attuned to human affairs then they might have made the connection between the advent of the new highway that passed less than a mile from the ranch and its heretofore unknown history as an outlaw hideout. And if Flo and Andy knew how to read read, they would have understood the sign that the new owner had erected at the ranch’s entrance:

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 343–Some Good Things Lost, Gained and A Celebration of Hairspray

ireneallison12

Some Good Things Lost

-1-

Wisdom

I asked my grandmother if everything was wonderful in the good old days. She told me that “wonderful” can exist at any time as long as you are young and have enough money. She also said it’s better to be young than anything else, but since nobody stays that way, sources of money should always be cultivated.

-2-

THRIFT

My Grandpa Henry was a custodian at a community college for forty-three years. And although he made a decent “working man’s wage,” and in all other ways was a generous man, not once in his life did he pay more than two-hundred dollars for a car.

He had a thing for extremely tuckered government vehicles at state auctions. One year he landed a 1970-something Plymouth Fury for twenty bucks because he was the only one to bid on it. Grandpa Henry was proud of that car even though the only way to start it was to wrap your left arm behind the wheel and pull hard on the shift while cranking the starter with your other hand and pumping the accelerator, hoping it fired before the battery croaked.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Goodbye by Frederick K Foote

ireneallison12

I believe that knowing we will die causes art and kindness. I mean if you knew you were going to live forever, why invest your soul in that sculpture? Why not be a jerk? I also believe if there are immortals out there, they are uncultured assholes.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Cat Eyes by Yashar Seyedbagheri

ireneallison12

You never know which new writer will hit the site in a big way until a little time goes by. Often we get one timers whose contributions are appreciated, yet leave us pining for more. And there are the occasionals who submit every season or so, and we always welcome their return. Then you get prolific persons such as Mir Yashar Seyedbagheri. He hit the Literally Stories ground running and hasn’t looked back since. Although there will be a definitive count in a few months, Yash has already surpassed twenty posts alone this year of 2021, and today we invite you to look back at his first LS story from 2020.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 341: Where Have All the Disposable Ensigns Gone and Results From the Great Cat Division of the Feline Olympics

ireneallison12

Three or four years ago I gave up on network television for the sake of my safety. It doesn’t mean that I have departed from gazing glassy-eyed into a screen, but nowadays I feed the vacuum in my mind caused by a lifetime of watching TV with YouTube and NetFlix. The TV is still on, but in the other room, tuned to one of those retro-channels, to long since departed shows, which star dead actors who come back to life for twenty-three to forty-six minutes five days a week, in worlds where forever usually arrives no later than 1982.

The main reason for this involves the Discovery Channel and its spin-offs on basic cable. For years my general sense of fear and isolation was greatly enhanced by an endless succession of learned talking heads who glibly informed me what would happen to Earth if it wandered too close to a black hole or was bathed in a gamma ray burst or nailed by an asteroid the size of Cincinnati. And none of it was pretty. End of Days. Repent. I was more distrubed, however, by the smarmy attitude of the scientists who spoke of these possible calamities with twinkles in their eyes. Why were they so happy to suggest these things? Isn’t everyday living hard enough already? Are these people sociopaths? And how come they all wear khaki pants and blue shirts? Even Victor Frankenstien owned a tie.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Kenny Women by Fiona McGarvey

ireneallison12

James Joyce would have understood Amber in Fiona McGarvey’s Kenny Women. He would have understood the social circumstances of the ugliness that finds her as well as her lassitude toward it. Although the story is hard going, it is rewarding due to its honesty and the quiet strength of McGarvey’s prose.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – The Thing by Dianne Willems

ireneallison12

I’d rather that antlers grow in than have a child. Although it’s probably for the best that a person who has no children should feel that way, not everyone is so blessed. In an even more sinister conception, a combination of buyer’s remorse, potential Munchausen by proxy and our dear pals depression and fear drive this week’s rerun, The Thing by Dianne Willems. It is a simple tale of a complicated state of being, which I believe happens often, yet a shame enforced secrecy persists to the point of causing tragedy.

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