Author: literallystories2014

Short Fiction

Sun Glitter by Renato Barucco

literallystories2014

The long reclusion started the night of the big scare, almost a year ago. Smoke detectors went off at two in the morning that Sunday. Mr. Hart was the first to head for the stairs and the last to get to the street, out of breath. Neighbors in nightclothes ran past him holding their kids, their pets, each other. As sirens approached Willow Street, tenants complained and swore under their breath, alarmed and annoyed, not a bit surprised, as though they expected all along that the kid in 3A would have done something stupid.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Everything’s Opposite by Jake K

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Everything is opposite.  That’s what I tell my therapist.  Like a snakebite, the first-aid is not to wash the wound.  You suck the venom out because whatever you swallow, your stomach kills.  Or a concussion.  People say never sleep after a concussion.   But sleep is how your brain recovers.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Fred Rippon’s Mushroom House by Tom Sheehan

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“What the good Jesus!” Pete Tura yelled and disappeared, and as he said it again, his voice muffled, his mouth most likely closed by horse manure, a whole nine yards of it, the bottom of the collection box hanging from the second floor of the Hood’s Milk Company horse barn in West Lynn let go, taking my pal with it. I last saw one arm, not waving goodbye, probably trying to keep the pitchfork from doing him damage. Possibly he had tried to throw it behind him. That innocent weapon of deadly tines was not in sight as I peered down into the mixture of black clutter and hay still settling down with a metronomic slowness you could count.

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All Stories, General Fiction

A Secret Study of Jack Wilkens, Drunk by Tom Sheehan

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Early evening light, what was left of it, spilled near Jack Wilkens in his one lone room in the big house, a house once flaunting and imposing in its stance, now cluttered like an old shed forgotten in a back lot, debris its main décor. Despite his reputation as the town drunk, a ne’er-do-well from the first day, an inveterate crank, there had been an instant and subtle attraction between me and the old codger, an attraction without early explanation.

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