Author: ireneallison12

All Stories, Editor Picks, Short Fiction

Week 352- Ch-Ch-Changes

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Welcome to Year 8, L.S.E.!

I’ve never understood greeting a new year with changing your ways in mind. If you are doing something that needs to be departed from, why wait until the Earth is at a specific, artificially labeled point in its orbit to quit smoking crack or stealing purses? And if there’s some grand task you want to undertake, don’t wait for Nike to give you permission or inspiration. They don’t give a damn about you unless you buy their shoes. Stuff will always get in the way; Be Persistent and as Inevitable as Death may not be the cheeriest slogan, but I’m not trying to sell you something, either..

Yet there are times when even a lame concept makes a convincing argument. And, yes, there are even times when perhaps evacuating the contents of my mind every other Saturday fails to show keen respect for the tales presented during the week. But most often I usually disregard the negative thoughts I have for my activities and do something different because I consider it a Big Idea.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Short Fiction

The Raccoon and the Personal Trainer: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical by Leila Allison

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It had been a good summer. A little too good. Tony sat atop an obviously forgotten Frito Lay delivery behind the 7-11 and stood watch as the others in the pack looted the short pallet and took its contents to their “clubhouse” down by the creek. Raccoons do not normally have sophisticated criminal minds–pretty much smash (actually tip) and grab is their way–but that wasn’t the case with Tony. He was an abnormally intelligent Raccoon who had the soul of a bandit. Tony loved beer and food, but he got a bigger kick out of stealing.

Maybe so, and although it is never the object of a Feeble Fable to cast body shame, the plain fact that Tony was beginning to resemble a chubby zoo Panda instead of a reasonably in shape wild Raccoon didn’t weigh on him as much as maybe it should have. And the other members of his crew were getting just as tubby. Just a month ago they would have had the pallet stripped in under two minutes; now, with all the dragging bellies and the huge butts smacking into one another, it was taking twice as long. If Tony had been aware of television, he might have seen the similarity between his gang and that on the Sopranos.

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Short Fiction

Amy and the Fabulous Felinespy: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical By Leila Allison

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Amy is a long haired, owl-eyed Calico who distrusts everything that doesn’t align with her worldview. Her son, Maxo, is a yearling Orange Tabby whose personality is closer to that of a Golden Retriever than that of a Cat.

You cannot fully appreciate Amy’s coat of many colors until you see her in the sun. Every known pattern and hue in Catdom is present and never repeated in Amy’s quilt-like fur; yet away from the window she comes off reddish brown. Maxo is a standard Orange Tabby, his color is comparable to that of a creamsicle. Amy is small, mostly fur; whereas Maxo (despite a diet large enough to sustain three cats) has yet to grow into his long, gangly frame. Imagine one of those once adorable child actors who hit puberty while the show was on hiatus and you will understand Maxo’s appearance. But since he has recently been “fixed,” the vet opined that healthy young Master Maxo should soon expand like a self inflating raft.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – The Busker by Marco Etheridge

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The Busker is the first story, but certainly not the last, written by Marco Etheridge to appear on the site. It is a simple piece that changes keys and time signatures and passes from Vienna to New Orleans and back. There’s something lost and forlorn about it and it has the magic to transport me to two places I have yet to visit, in person.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 350- An Antisocial Experiment, Five Magi, A Special Announcement and Hell’s Jukebox: The Love Songs

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An Antisocial Experiment

There are endless social movements dedicated to improving people by requiring them not to be like people. Depending on your point of view this activity lies somewhere between education and brainwashing. I am old fashioned to the degree that I believe a person is influenced by both her upbringing and whatever chemistry is peculiar to her. You do your best to raise a child and if she grows up to be a doctor or a teacher you share in the credit, if she turns out to be a Josephine Mengela or the incarnation of Lizzie Borden, you shoulder some of the blame.

A person can improve. But people, as a whole, seldom do because there are “leaders” who want you to do as they command and will reward “good behavior” with letting you spend your life gazing into your phone and punish “bad thoughts” with unsupported accusations and placing you under the spotlight on the scaffold for a good old fashioned cyberstoning. This has been going on in one form or another since the invention of the third person–the first child who decides that her parents should be severely sanctioned for bringing her into this overlighted, loud and dreary existence, as well as not allowing her to have a phone until she can use one responsibly.

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Short Fiction

Pie-Eyed Peety and the Prohibitionist: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical By Leila Allison

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The Principle Players

Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon is alive in the sense that he walks the Earth, is self-aware (well, sort of) and is routinely observed “doing stuff to other stuff.” Peety neither breathes nor eats, yet he does speak (again–well, sort of), drinks, urinates, vomits and frequently passes out, so it is assumed that he sleeps, perchance dreams. Through a bizarre, interdimensional transformation unlikely to take place in the Universe again anytime soon, Pie-Eyed Peety the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon, once merely an insensate cartoon character used to move cheap beer in a duplicate Earth, back in the late 1940’s, has been installed on our Earth as an active “citizen.” More simply put, like everyone and -thing else, Peety is.

Unlike Bugs Bunny or a Simpson inserted into a live action film, Peety remains two-dimensional. In form he is as artiscally fine and realistic as one of those “turkeys” little kids draw in school by tracing the outline of their hands on construction paper then cutting it out to be placed on the refrigerator. Peety is about the size of a Big Mac and he wears a fedora and is always seen carrying and drinking from a bottomless can of PDQ Pilsner. He travels around in a yet to be explained by science halo of popping bubbles, as to convey his constant state of intoxication.

Continue reading “Pie-Eyed Peety and the Prohibitionist: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical By Leila Allison” →
Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Bathroom Throne by Yash Seyedbagheri

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Nobody knew at the opening of 2021 that Yashshar Seyedbagheri would have a record breaking year on the site. At this moment, on an otherwise forgettable Saturday morning in the Summer of ‘21, Yash has appeared thirty times, with more to come. In fact we will be running out of year before all of Yash’s acceptances in 2021 will be posted. It looks like 2022 will be another Red Letter year for this author at Literally Stories.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Authentic by David Lohrey

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Ironic contrast and compare fiction is easy to conceive but tough to deliver. Thus Authentic by David Lohrey is a piece that underscores its own name. The story is simple enough but the author deftly captures a moment and lets it go unharmed. It’s a little thing, like a hummingbird, easily damaged if handled without care.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 348: The Graveyard Game and Rejected Classic Special Episodes

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The Graveyard Game

I grew up across the street from a graveyard. By old world standards Ivy Green Cemetery is freshly dug. Still, it was founded in 1902, which makes it the oldest boneyard in town. Then again, there are only two.

The cemetery is fourteen and a half acres seated in a sprawling hillside that faces west. When the weather is in (usually it’s not) you get a fine view of the nearby Olympic Mountains.

Despite its relative youth, Ivy Green is almost at capacity. There are only a few prepaid plots left to fill. Yet it could take a long time for that to happen. Nearly all of the plots belong to women; as everyone knows, nothing dies harder than an Old Lady.

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