Author: literallystories2014

Short Fiction

More Disco Than Death by Haley DiRenzo

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Emmaline arrives back in Michigan for her mother’s funeral to discover the airline has lost her luggage. Through the fog of her grief, she makes it to a Target, which used to be the Dollar Store, which used to be the bike shop that her brother worked at for a summer. She would walk by while running errands for her father’s flower store, which is now a Starbucks. The cemetery behind her old house is still there, but people must buy their bouquets from the Target now.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Incinerator and the Sinkhole by Christopher Miller

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Dad always told me there was an incinerator back here behind the gas station. Just didn’t think I’d ever see it for myself. And I especially didn’t think I’d see Mom’s stuff burning inside it. But life comes at you fast. Very fast. You have to keep up. Keep up or you’ll die. 

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All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever -Kris – An Essay by Dale Williams Barrigar

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Kris by Dale Williams Barrigar

In 2006 and 2009, at the ages of 70 and 73, Kris Kristofferson released two classic American folk albums that remain virtually invisible to the population at large, the mainstream media, and the general American culture, much like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, who’s THERE but largely un-talked of, or Herman Melville, who half-invisibly spent the last decades of his life haunting the New York streets as a striking, but “unknown,” individual who looked half like a bearded mystic in a rumpled suit, half wandering minstrel just in from the sea. How strange it is to think that he was also probably passing bearded, informally dressed Walt Whitman on the street many times during those days, as writer Harold Bloom has pointed out. One wonders if they nodded to each other.

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All Stories, General Fiction

It’s a Little Bit Funny by Paul Kimm

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That’s how my mum still says it. Her phrase for anything that’s either actually funny, just unusual, quite mundane, or even a slight bit different from how something might be otherwise. Every time I go back home to see her, and then my dad, I can pretty much guarantee she’ll say ‘it’s a little bit funny’ in regard to something or other, as she has done for years.

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All Stories, General Fiction

In Polite Company at the End of the World by Laurel Hanson

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“The serving girl’s run off,” Cathryn said as she set the tea tray down on the blackened linen, “so I’ll be mother.”

Her guests inclined their heads politely and she poured, apologizing for the lack of sugar. “It’s the war of course, not a lump to be had for love nor money.” Her guests murmured softly. They understood, but still, it was frightfully embarrassing not to serve a proper tea. Why, she even had to make do with buttered bread instead of cucumber sandwiches.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Silence That Shaped Me by Torsaa Emmanuel Oryiman

literallystories2014

Why would life be so unfair to me? What have I done to deserve all this pain and, hardship? Sometimes I sit alone, lost in the quiet hum of the night, questioning every breath I take, every step I make. I search my heart for answers that never come, and the silence feels heavier than words. 
What sin did I commit to be born into such deprivation?

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Eclipsing Indy by Christopher Ananias

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A lot of strange people flowed into Indianapolis for the solar eclipse. Not to mention, the “I-70 Killer” circling the city, with his fangs out, on the long swooping bypasses. The teenager Treat met Roger, a religious drug addict, at a Spaghetti joint on Lex Avenue.  

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