Author: literallystories2014

All Stories, General Fiction

At a Loss for Words by Tom Sheehan

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An athletic-looking man, late 30s, tall, long legs spilled at seating but signifying comfort, unmindful of the mass of traffic from all corners of the world marking the Bean Pot City as a current center of international traffic, reads a soft-bound book amid the jet-setting hustle and bustle of Boston’s Logan Airport. Some of the world’s movement flows clearly past his interest in the printed, still word held in hand, taking his mind to another location, another setting, other personalities as alive as those flowing about him, queries, demands, exclamations and greetings in the order of the day.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Boy at the Bus Stop by Nick Sweeney

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The eve of All Souls’ Day, and the dead to be visited, provided with light, the all-weather candles of the graveyard, the living visitors to be catered-for with bread and beer. It all meant shopping, the carrying of things, and of all-weather people, in and out of the darkness brought down by November. The eleventh month announced the onslaught of the winter, a drain on the spirits, a greying of the skin, the miniscule tightening of arteries, the dimming of the vision, the only clear thing in sight the glimmer of the wrongs done and not righted, a time of ghosts.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Aref and the Hermit Crab by Phoebe Reeves-Murray

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Hundreds of hermit crabs wearing toothpaste caps as shells shuffled through the dirt at the construction site, dirt so full of broken glass that it sparkled even at night, even with no light. Aref knew probably only he saw that seemingly infinite sparkle, just like he knew the hundreds of hermit crabs were really only one because you’d never find that many crabs wearing toothpaste caps for shells.

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All Stories, General Fiction

From One War to Another without Choice by Tom Sheehan

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I’d lost a brother and remember the headlines, newsreels, songs of bond-selling, gas-griping, and movies too true to hate, the settings of World War II. Those days found the whole Earth bent inwards, imploding bombs, bullets, blood, shrieking terrible bird cries in my ears only deepest sleep could lose if it ventured close.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Captain Corn by David Howard

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“I was never in the Boy Scouts,” I lied. It seemed the wiser course in the job interview than to have the possible employer learn I had been asked to leave Pack 22 after telling the Scoutmaster what he could do with the rope he was using to teach knot tying.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Step by Step by Step by Deva Mari

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 Out there, it was a storm rioting, the type that Marion faced when arriving at the Bates Motel, and I was sitting in this stranger’s freshly vacuumed Mitsubishi with my muddy, turn-out-not-to-be-waterproof hiking boots, him telling me how he hadn’t been home in nearly two decades. That, back there, he had a wife still mourning his death. That his daughter wasn’t the little princess she used to be, but married recently and was pregnant now with two little princesses herself. His voice a warm drone against the rain that was drumming against the Mitsubishi’s metal frame. I was just happy that I was in there, and not stuck at the last lonely gas station, biding my time with overpriced Cheetos and overweight truck drivers.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Callback by Jack Coey

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Willard got a call back. He was surprised, his knees shook, and his voice trembled, but they must have seen something. The only thing he could think of was they must have thought his nervousness was a character choice instead of him. He told Flo about it, and she shook her head. He auditioned in the banquet room at the E.F. Lane Hotel in Keene for Foster and Lewis, two producers from Concord, who were casting a play called I Did It for Love, a three-act comedy around same-sex marriage. The stage manager was named Leon, and he came into the supermarket where Willard worked, and told him about the call back.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Authentic by David Lohrey

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We sat at the desert inn, at the window which afforded a magnificent view onto Monument Valley, awaiting our luncheon orders. She sipped desert mint tea sweetened by hummingbird saliva and I lapped pomegranate wine, a divine concoction of pine sap sweetened by cactus rind and desert rosehips with a drizzle of wild honey, harvested not from the hive but from the beaks of mountain owl.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Washing in the Adige by Evan Massey

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Emilio is sitting across from me. I can barely understand his broken English as it mixes with his native Italian tongue. They sometimes overlap. He makes a new language of which I understand very little. He is going on about something, something about a child and a woman. He is talking fast and touching his face and tapping his mouth with his finger. I’m thinking that I am the woman that he is going on about and that he is trying to describe. The child, I do not know. Emilio is talking fast and I’m giving it my best effort.

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