Author: literallystories2014

All Stories, General Fiction

Charlestown Calling Back by Tom Sheehan

literallystories2014

These days, you’re the only Townie I would know on sight as you grace our Riverside Cemetery in your own hellos, tall as all get-out, robust, time marking your way past that mere issue, and a charmer from a distance on any day of the week. I wish, among other issues and dreams, that you’d recognize me, wrap those loving arms around me, greet the passing among all these stones, upright, neat in place, fighting off the centuries one by one.

Continue reading “Charlestown Calling Back by Tom Sheehan” →
All Stories, Horror

Baby’s Breath by Quinn

literallystories2014

Charice went to check on Nate after having laid him down for a nap only twenty minutes ago.  She had an almost obsessive need to check on him, which the online forums she frequented said was normal for a new mother. She found these social media groups to be just as helpful as they were harmful. There was a lot of information not based in science that made its way around. She found the support of other mothers to be the most helpful. To find reassurances in the words of other moms. Despite her enjoyment of the groups she was taking a break for the day after nearly getting herself worked up over someone being rude on her post mentioning Nigri, her cat, having taken a liking to the baby. They raged in warning her against the cat hurting the baby, against toxoplasmosis, and one nut told her the cat would steal her baby’s breath while he slept. While Nigri had been very interested in baby Nate since Charice had brought him home, quite the opposite of how she thought she would be, she didn’t feel there was anything more than curiosity of a new creature inhabiting the home.

Continue reading “Baby’s Breath by Quinn” →
All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Sawbones by Edward N McConnell

literallystories2014

Tom Kenner sat looking out the window of a waiting room at the Columbus Orthopedic Hospital. He had been through the magazines but, dog-eared and dated, they couldn’t hold his attention. “Maybe staring out the window will make the time go more quickly,” he thought. It didn’t.

Continue reading “Sawbones by Edward N McConnell” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Gone by Robert Steward

literallystories2014

The first place I search for Mum is Sainsbury’s. It’s the first shop that pops into my head. Maybe she needs ingredients for a cake or something. Though the last one she baked stirs up images of a smouldering mount Vesuvius. She forgot the eggs. I whip through the supermarket to the beep of the checkouts, panning every aisle, even the frozen food section. But she’s not there.

Continue reading “Gone by Robert Steward” →
All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Quick Death of a Lottery Foe by Tom Sheehan

literallystories2014

Murder, when it comes in pairs, causes echoes. The push and pull, the cause and effect, the what and why, bounce off every surface. The sound jangles and makes intrusive inroads into daily and otherwise common sense. When one of the victims is a small account part-time drunk, bar room stentorian, an ex-jailbird, and the other is Doyle Hapgood, Harvardian, Commissioner of Police for the City of Boston, there is resonance, there is reverberation, and the black ink of headlines runs red.

Continue reading “Quick Death of a Lottery Foe by Tom Sheehan” →
All Stories, General Fiction

The Mother Dog by Antony Osgood – Content warning. This story has content that some readers may find upsetting.

literallystories2014

People on honeymoon visit a different time zone and endure a surfeit of shared hours. We learn the language of negotiation when volunteering to lose a little of ourselves. Both of us feel change to be obligatory, though we can never quite express who we might become; we know we will be less ourselves. Adding to our transformation, impending parenthood: the great world tilts.

Continue reading “The Mother Dog by Antony Osgood – Content warning. This story has content that some readers may find upsetting.” →
All Stories, Fantasy, Horror

Lives End Where Two Roads Meet by Enyi Nnabuihe

literallystories2014

There were naked children rolling tyres in the rain on this particular Thursday the masquerades came. About seventeen of them; their wet, charcoaled skins, and little, rubbery limbs, emitting joy, radiating hope. There were mothers breastfeeding children in front of their shops; talking and selling, chatting, laughing and howling with the winds that accompanied the rains. There were dogs, goats and cats, roaming, resplendently, around the muddy streets, feeling at home.

Continue reading “Lives End Where Two Roads Meet by Enyi Nnabuihe” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Clovis Clayton Holiday by Frederick K Foote

literallystories2014

My mother told me, “Clovis Clayton Holiday, you gonna be the death of me with the way you do the things you do.”

My father instructed me, “Clovis, son, sometimes you have to go along to get along, you understand?”

My older sister, Nora, scolded me, “Clo, Negro, you can’t just go and do anything you want to do. You got to follow the rules.”

Nelda, my younger sister, declared, “Clo, You, too weird to be my brother. I disown your Black ass.”

Continue reading “Clovis Clayton Holiday by Frederick K Foote” →