The world had been ending all week. I heard the growl and supersonic whine of jet airplanes whooshing off Grissom Air Force Base. The rain came down all week, too. Like it would never end—even if the world did. I stood at the porch railing with my eye on the pelting silver darkness, but I didn’t see Boone. All I saw was the glare of the streetlight reflected on the wet tarmac like a false moon.
Continue reading “Relapse at the End of the World by Christopher J Ananias”
Two in the morning. The air was luminous, chalky, bloated with humidity. The smoke detector was a broken stoplight, stuck on green all night. Exhausted, jet lagged, eyeing the light, I thought of my ninety-eight-year-old grandmother Ida.
Continue reading “Super Moon in Rome by David Levine”
(Editor’s Note: This fine work by M.D. appears on a Sunday because it features what we refer to–often derisively–a Talking Untalkable. We seldom go for that sort of thing unless it is done with elan or in a well done fantasy. Both are the case here. Just a sweet little reminder from the Eds. that such items, unless loaded with charm, will be met with scorn, Bull Terriers and life insurance pitches–the Eds.)
They Don’t Walk Alone
I smelled the house before I ever saw it. Spirits inside—too many for comfort. Dust so thick it clung to the tongue. Beneath it all drifted the faint electric tang of souls stretched thin by years of being ignored, like old copper wire humming with frayed insulation.
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – They Don’t Walk Alone by M.D. Smith IV”
The laptop glows in the dim kitchen, blue light flattening the room, turning the window into a black square that gives nothing back.
I drag the computer closer, rubber feet rasping across the table like a warning.
Resurrection Pass Overnight: Intermediate hike: Good fitness required.
The photo at the top of the event listing shows a line of hikers crossing a narrow bridge, green valley opening beneath them, the future open wide.
Continue reading “Wolf. Normal by Lynne Curry”
“Not trying to be nosy, Wilton, but why the latex gloves?”
Wilton, armed with a rational explanation, chuckles. “Well, Mr. Simms, I contracted a rash working in the flower garden, and my hands are slathered in oint—”
Continue reading “Scales by David Henson”
I stopped drinking after my younger brother Cody chose assisted death. He was paralyzed from the neck down and never able to get high again because of it. That gave him courage.
Continue reading “When I Almost Became a Monk by Harrison Kim”
Inside Saint Anthony’s Basilica in Padua, he turned to his wife and whispered that he had a “confession to make,” darting three steps toward a dark, vacant box.
“You got me,” she whispered back. She still liked his jokes, even after six years together, three as digital nomads. Pointing to her fitness tracker watch, she reminded him that they each had Zoom meetings starting in thirty minutes.
Continue reading “Confessions of a Digital Nomad by Dan Shiffman”
Extreme Adult Content – refer to the tabs at the bottom of the story
A small dark-haired boy was walking in the fog like a phantom. Lenny Coins thought about his father. How could his father do such a thing—things? But the balloons. What about those?
At the bus stop, Tom waited for Lenny and offered him a Marlboro cigarette. Like he did every morning.
“I’m only eleven. I don’t smoke, Tom.” This was in the eighties when the Marlboro Man rode the range, instead of a hospital bed. Smoking was cool, and serial killers were coming on strong.
Continue reading “The Stringer by Christopher Ananias”
The ol’ boy downstairs humps his walker a few inches b’fore ever’ step he takes down the driveway. Had a stroke his wife tol’ me but she says he’s stubborn as a cocklebur and won’t let nobody else git his mail.
In the summer of 1997, when most men of his age were discovering the quiet dignity of cholesterol, Gopal Banerjee decided to make a perfume that would outlive death itself. Not metaphorically, he meant it quite literally. “Eternity,” he called it, though Calvin Klein had already used the name. Gopal didn’t mind; he believed trademarks were for those who lacked vision.
Continue reading “The Scent of Eternity by Susmita Mukherjee”
literally stories 