The weather was the culprit. Thunderstorms stranded Ella’s date in Boston. Flooding in South Carolina kept her son’s girlfriend in Charleston. Ella’s planned evening of formal dress, fine dining, forgettable speeches, and priceless facetime with clients and potential clients was a must-attend event.
It was late afternoon when Margaret’s doctor told us that her condition was deteriorating, that it was time to talk options. Mom sat closest to Margaret’s bedside, with her back to the window. Dad and I hunched forward in taupe, plastic chairs positioned around the foot of the bed. Margaret’s doctor stood in his white lab coat opposite Mom, a clipboard resting on his waist.
Ah yes – Leila has picked one from the far back corner of the catacombs – We miss Tobias so this is a lovely little reminder of his skill:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – All Saints Day by Tobias Haglund”
The motel was distasteful. The wallpaper peeled off in strips, and water leaked from the ceiling into a near overflowing bucket. Everything had a yellow tint as the sun slowly set.
Out on the back patio, sat two men.
The World From This High
The stars are out chittering over the water and the bridge is cold on the backs of my thighs and for the last three years He The One has been jabbering in my head telling me to jump. I haven’t listened to Him until now, I’ve been strong and I’ve resisted, but there comes a point when you just can’t take it anymore and you give in and so here I am. I’m not happy about it but at least when I jump They’ll stop beaming all those messages into my head and They won’t be able to torture me anymore.
Continue reading “The World From This High by Andrew Jason Jacono”
Scrawny old Bill Jackson worked twenty years as janitor at the mine. He swept the lunchroom, washed and waxed the office floors, operated the snowplough and weed whacked the grass. He liked to see things clean. After the mine closed, he spent most of his time driving up and down the highway and side-roads picking up cans and bottles. “Without me, the garbage would just pile-up” he told anyone who’d listen. He hauled discarded tires, old couches, rotten mattresses into the back of his pickup and drove them to the landfill.
Continue reading “The Line Man’s Last Drive by Harrison Kim “
Christ. Almighty. Aunt Nell. Aunt. Fucking. Nell.
Bloodshot, enflamed eyes – well, eye: the right one. Skin like crumpled autumn leaves. Fleshy folds beneath her chin, dangling down like an over-spill tray on a coffee machine. A red, bulbous nose, courtesy of the ‘bloody rosacea’ that plagued Aunt Nell her whole adult life and transformed her nose into a beetroot.
It had happened. The unthinkable. The thing that she had been dreading for four years since finding out. She was morphing into Aunt Nell. Weird, you might think, turning into her aunt; turning into her mother would be more like it. A natural progression. What happens. This was what she found out: Aunt Nell was her mother. More on that can-of-worms later.
Leila has brought out a piece by a regular contributor to the site. Adam keeps us on out toes with his off the wall stories and his art. He is a great friend and an unusual and entertaining writer. This is what Leila said:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – You Got That Right by Adam Kluger”
Walking Boss Cooper scythed me at the loading dock. She’d set up a blind and waited until the large “agricultural investment order” I’d charged to the company arrived and forced me out of my secret sanctum. Renfield had warned me that “the WBC” was prowling the campus for two suckers to present Orientation to the “fresh fishes” that day, as well as a butt to fill an opening at the Neverending Crisis. Although it was most definitely a day for streaming Hulu in a utility closet, necessity led me to venture onto the open tundra.
Part One: A murderer I cared for
There was a young boy once who has read a lot – not for any romantic reason, other than his father being unavailable, and his mother being overly available. He spent most of his Saturdays in Chapter Zero (local second-hand bookstore and library) – not for any romantic reason, other than his father being unavailable. He would have spent most of his Sundays there too, but he stayed home instead – not for any romantic reason, other than his mother being overly available.
Continue reading “Crimson Coloured Raindrops by David Darvasi”
