Her forehead stretched and arced into a pale rainbow and her hair lengthened into a dark mane. Her eyes and nose shimmered, while her mouth melted towards her sagging chest. Her clothes were random brushstrokes of ruby red and deep green. And then in a warped flash, she was gone.
Continue reading “The Peephole by Tim Frank”
Port Fairy, Victoria 1859
I am grown now; and the sperm whales and the southern rights that brought the ships here seeking their precious oil and the bones which make corsets for ladies in far-away places no longer visit. But still the people come, and the farming settlement thrives. Port Fairy, named for a sea captain who landed in this spot, part of the Port Phillip District in the great southern land.
Continue reading “The Seventh Wave by AJ Lyndon”
“It’s hot enough to taste the air and eat the summer,” Nana said. She settled herself onto the stoop’s top step. “Don’t worry child, he’ll be here soon enough.”
Continue reading “Waiting for Daddy by Serenity Marshall”
He was in the sparse land between shifting sands of the great desert and the last tree bearing green when he saw the vultures descending from their high flight. Breward Chandler, “Brew” to friends back in the mountains where breathing was much easier than here in the midst of little life, sat bareback on an Indian pony he had freed from a natural corral behind a blow-down. Chandler had learned that the horse would obey pulls on his mane and in this manner he had escaped from sure capture by heading into the desert, with his pistols loaded and a lariat and a canteen he had grabbed on the run. He was not sure who was after him, either renegade Indians or renegade whites out for the kill, looking for guns, clothes, saddles, anything for free. He was hoping that they’d measure the little he might have against the rigors of a chase in the desert. Perhaps, he also hoped, they were smarter than he thought they were.
Continue reading “A Saddle in the Desert by Tom Sheehan”
“This is it, Mitch, the crunch match we’ve all been waiting for.”
“That’s right, Bud, a fight we never thought would happen, or even should. But here we are. Weird.”
Continue reading “The Big Infight by Tim Frank”
Schiehallion, aka The Faery Hill of the Caledonians, is a magnificent, isolated, rugged, limestone ridge in Highland Perthshire, in the plumb-centre of Scotland. I’ve climbed it many times in the past, but now my arthritic knees deny me that pleasure: the jarring of the knees taken all the enjoyment out of hill-walking. So what the hell am I doing now, struggling along Glen Mór, on the south side of Schiehallion, in the November sleet, with a giant ship-in-a-bottle in my rucksack?
Continue reading “The Otherworld Hiding Place by Michael Bloor”
Eighty-nine-years-old and he hasn’t a clue. About fucking any of it.
*
“I’m sorry, my love. I’m so sorry.”
Continue reading “Frank by Jane Houghton”
The first man in this story, Carl Savage, stood at the end of the ward in a veterans’ hospital in Central Massachusetts: the second man, bed-ridden, stared at him, fighting for a splash of recognition. There was the way that man shrugged his shoulders, looked back over one as if he had missed a targeting mark. The second man moved in his bed; a slight movement barely noticeable. He had not moved much in almost twenty years. He wanted to call out, but he knew no name; but knew something; it spun up out of him as if it were the last chance in the whole world. The man at the end of the hall halted his departure and turned around slowly in his departure. The second man in the bed began to move one finger. One finger! One finger as if tapping on a key, tapping, tapping, tapping.
Continue reading “The Vet by Tom Sheehan”
Oh, yeah, here he come. A handsome young, broad-face, dark skin, Black boy with curly hair. He walks with a swagger and a smile. A smile that would strip girls and women, boys and men, out of their underwear at the glint of those sparkling teeth. And he got moves. Athletic, strong, and fast. And he come up here to the log with a smile and style, not knowing he’s still a child.
Continue reading “Dauntless by Frederick K Foote”
My wife went ahead to her parents’ house for Thanksgiving, so I had to catch up to her after work. It’s a four-hour drive, and after two hours driving up highway 35, I needed to get off the road for a burger and beer. As soon as I got out of the car, I was surrounded by this white light, which I initially thought was just a floodlight from the shopping center. Before I got to the door of the microbrewery, I felt myself dissolving into a thousand little bits, and in five seconds, I went from the parking lot of a pour house to some kind of oval room with bright, white metal walls. Then, an alien walked in through what could have been the orifice of a metallic uterus. When I say an alien, this guy could have been taken from the fake autopsy video Fox tried to sell us all in the 90s. As cliché as it may be, he was a grey stick figure with oval, black eyes. The first words out of my mouth were “Dude, you’re an alien!”
Continue reading “A Probing Interview by John Willems”
literally stories 