Author: literallystories2014

All Stories, General Fiction

We Do Not Mistrust Each Other Because We Are Armed by Matt Garabedian

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Sergeant Bonham walked the streets of East Berlin, finding a city mired in despair. President Reagan’s words hung fresh on the western side of the Wall. No graffiti marked the eastern side. Razor wire and sniper rifles kept would-be vandals at a distance. His counterparts on this side kept a watchful eye from imposing guard towers, in contrast to the humble structure on the other side of the checkpoint from which he stood his watch. This was an odd way to spend his R&R, but he needed to understand.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Gosh darn it, I’m wet! by Glen Dungan

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Alright fine.

Okay so the rubber duck bobs in the water, ignorant of the vapor steaming from the pool and rising to the banisters and balustrades in the warehouse. It wears a yellow raincoat and holds in a cartoonish way an umbrella inscribed with the words “Gosh darn it, I’m wet!” It drifts in between two pillars of steam, bumping like a lily pad just underneath the nipple of child peddler Marc “The Lobster” Cameron. So fat is the nipple that one might consider it a breast. The tattoo on Marc’s pectoral is further an example of this fact, a strange attempt at a Chinese dragon that might have looked better on a fit body but has since taken the form of Mushu from Mulan. At least I think that is his name. I don’t know. I’ve never seen it. That or the godawful remake. Don’t ask how I have an opinion of a movie I haven’t seen. I just know. Okay. All I’m saying is that this really goes to show that some movies should be immortalized, having already stood the test of time with intergenerational audiences.

But anyway. I digress.

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All Stories, Fantasy

No Good Deed by Marco Etheridge

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An overcast sky spills milk-pale light over a blighted landscape. The light is too weak to shadow the dry-stone walls that run along a potholed lane. The stone walls rise to a vanishing point at the crest of a muddy hill, and over that crest comes the figure of a man.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Leaving Macedonia by David Flynn

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Joe’s body twitched in his bed, as he knew it would.  He hadn’t slept since he left the war zone in Macedonia.  Violent dreams with buckets of blood, screams in the night, these had been predicted in the article he had read.  Now, safe in Amsterdam, he was living the symptoms.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Hundreds of Little Pieces by Rachel Sievers 

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The glass falls from the counter and I find myself sucking in air right before an explosion of small bits of glass and red liquid spill out over the beige tile. I mourn the glass in the aftermath, not that it is anything special, but I hate to waste anything regardless of its obscurity of significance.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Coral, Not Pink by Rachel Sievers

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The cupcake frosting compacts and puddles in my mouth, slow and sticky going down my esophagus. I cough almost choking, shoving the rest of it in my mouth, and look down at the plastic container. It is hard to see in the dark of the closet but I can see neon pink sprinkles of three that remain.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Friend by Donnie Cox

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Arthur Nagel is an ugly, little man. He stands barely four feet tall, and his head is much too big for his body. The muscles on the left side of his face are totally paralyzed causing his face to droop. Because of his looks, most people think Arthur is mentally deficient. He is not.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Wrecking Ball by Stevie doCarmo

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“I’ve done it more than once. Which makes it possibly a bad habit.”  

 “What’s that?” Rama had asked.  

She’d been complexly twisted in her bus seat, patchouli-scented Jessica, pea-coated back to window, New Jersey gliding by behind her in what Rama remembered as a raw and drizzly November afternoon. “I just tell some people straight-out I’ll sleep with them if they want.”  

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All Stories, General Fiction

Blue by Selina Sheth

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Blue is the color of anxiety, the smell of despair, the sound of confusion, the taste of fear, the touch of doubt. For Jamshed, it brings back jumbled flashes of long-buried images and emotions. A neon cobalt-stained hospital wall at age five, the time he’d smashed his knee and waited endlessly for a doctor to arrive, any doctor. An inky high school test paper that he’d known he’d fail before even looking at the questions. A joyride in a stolen navy-hued Honda that had landed him and his slow-witted friend Pesi in jail for a night.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 358: The Pursuit of Meaningful Longevity, Tales For the New Year and an Elevating Saturday Special

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Welcome to a new year. Today is 8 January, an interesting date due to the odd mix of persons born on it. For example, Elvis, Stephen Hawking, David Bowie and Larry Storch were all born on this date. Elvis would be eighty-seven (thus still possible to “sight” at southern Piggly Wiggly buying peanut butter and bananas, if you are crazy); Mr. Hawking would mark his eightieth. and Bowie would be seventy-five. Alas all are gone, but we still have Larry Storch (dear God please let him live at least til this post airs, please, please). Yes, we still have “Corporal Agarn” from F-Troop. Mr. Storch turns ninety-nine today, and has outlived the others mentioned by a considerable margin of years even though he was (and by a long way) born first. 

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