Author: literallystories2014

All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, Horror

Progeny by Dima Alzayat

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Nineteen is the number of times I stabbed my father. One in each forearm, shoulder, thigh, calves. Neck back stomach balls. Between two ribs the knife plunged and pierced one lung, two, and caught on a shard of bone, a tendon shred. Wrench tug free. I’d pictured each puncture in detail one by one. Not over and over on loop like some freak but while waiting for the bus or falling asleep I thought about the order of it, in and out and back in, the quiet shrill of it. Muscle rip against blade, bone scrape against metal.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Everything Nice by M J Spurr

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I first saw the sculpture about a month ago, walking to the Cumberland Farms with Matt to get beer and some papers. It was shimmering under the late day’s sun in the back of a fenced-in yard. Even from a distance, I could see the long spindly legs of the black metal spider clinging to the delicate netting of its web, waiting for prey. I was mesmerized.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Acton by Christopher A. Dale

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Acton had never spent much time contemplating writer’s block. This had everything to do with the fact that he had never previously found himself its victim. Perhaps everything is too strong a word. Acton had no trouble considering the ins and outs of things and events he had no personal experience with—although these things and events necessarily carried with them some intellectual element that sparked his curiosity in the first place. Writer’s block, as an idea, had never presented such an element to command his attention, and on top of that, it seemed too cliché a notion to even deserve it. Nevertheless, the prejudice of abstraction doesn’t always hold up under the weight of actual experience, and he now found writer’s block to be a fascinating object of examination.

Acton was at his desk, unable to write.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Marlene Dietrich by Riham Adly

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My promotional Facebook ad campaign is far from ready. An upside down, high resolution, Marlene Dietrich holding my self-published book awaits my intervention.  I hesitate before choosing the rotate option or is it the flip? Marlene looks regal, confident in her fur coat. What would Marlene think of a book starting with:

 She loved lemons and would squirt them on everything, their yellow rind reminding him of her sunshine. Lemons never tasted sweeter. Without her, his heart wouldn’t beat right.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Short Fiction

Black Bear on White Paper by Desmond White

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In the Archial, what some call the Little Light Library, it is always night. The distant ceiling is a night’s sky held by pillars, and connecting those pillars are shelves of books coated in leather and dust. The only light comes from lanterns. Inside steel cages, white fires flicker eternally, generated by a lost art. The lanterns are stars if anything. The lower one travels, the bluer those stars. Deep enough and there are no lights at all.

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All Stories, Horror, Short Fiction

Paper Skins by L’Erin Ogle

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I take the skins of the women my lover loved. I flesh them until they are paper thin. They are folded stacked in a box at the back of my closet. The box is cherry wood and the lock is made of gold. I know it should be silver, because silver contains powerful magic, and sometimes I hear the skins shifting and whispering to each other.

Think what you want.

He left me no choice.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Summoning the Toads by Matthew Roy Davey

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The Mooney woman taught him how to do it.  She was forbidden to be on the premises, but she called Alfie over one day when he was playing near the fence that bordered the lane.  The call was a high fluttering whistle, dancing like a mountain stream.  He had been building a den from old branches and bracken when he heard, and though he knew from whence came the sound, he was drawn there as though to a trove of sweets.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

December by T D Calvin

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A small bird lands at the roadside, scuffing the hot dust, and she asks the tour guide what it is.

“Zebra finch,” he says.  “They’re what you wanna see if you’re lost out here.”

Eilidh watches the bird dab at the earth with its orange beak.

“Must be water somewhere close,” the guide says.  “They never stray far from it.”

“I wouldn’t either,” she says.

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All Stories, Literally Reruns

Literally Reruns – November Moon by Sharon Frame Gay

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The wonderful Leila Allison is keeping us well supplied with Rerun suggestions and they are all superb choices. Thank you so much Leila. This is what she had to say about November Moon:

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