Author: literallystories2014

All Stories, General Fiction, Humour

A Profession That Pays by Matt Phillips

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For a long time, it rained. We moved into the house in late October, before Halloween. I was surprised at the rain, how long it lasted. First it was days. The days became a week. And, finally, it had been raining off and on for three weeks. It was almost Thanksgiving. We were drowning. Sammy didn’t care about the rain. It didn’t bother her. She’d say, “nobody cares, Don. This is the Pacific Northwest. It’s gonna rain, OK?” I got up every morning and went straight to the front door and opened it. Rain.

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All Stories, General Fiction

There is a Forest Here by dm gillis

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There is only one way to satisfy those who want you sober, and that is by walking away from the comfort of alcohol, and into a room of uncushioned, dark-hearted truths, an act that defies all layers of logical self-defense.

Virginia Quipp had just entered that room, leaving behind the vodka, and the splendid but unwholesome hush of 4 a.m. It was her second day in that room. Her hands didn’t shake and her nausea was only slight, but at eight in the evening, she sat at her desk facing another night of hateful abstinence. What was it about sobriety that zealots found so alluring?

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All Stories, General Fiction

Paperback Summer by Embe Charpentier

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A reputable librarian knows how to tell a story. My eleven year-old grandniece, reader extraordinaire, inquires about my days as Cabbagetown’s librarian. Our rockers creak on the covered porch, a steady rain patters all about us. “Best story you got, Auntie Claire. And I better not be able to see the end comin’.”

I sip my sweet tea. She leans toward me as I begin. “This story is true, more or less.”

1980

Reading success; the number one predictor of a successful future. The research said children who chose books read more. Yet every summer, I rarely saw a child more than once or twice.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction, Story of the Week

Table for Four by Louis Hunter

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‘A judge tells a condemned man he’s going to hang next week, but he won’t know when until the hangman comes a-knockin’. The judge only says one thing, that it’ll be a surprise.’ The man with dark rimmed spectacles pauses to smoke, his hair is black and slick with Brylcreem.

‘So, when he’s locked up and waiting to be hung, this guy thinks to himself: “This shit ain’t fair, they have to tell me when I’m going to die. I’ve got rights.” So he decides to work it out. He figures if hasn’t been hung by Thursday, he can’t be killed on Friday because it wouldn’t be a surprise, he’d know it was coming.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Driving on the Sausage Run by Tom Sheehan

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(Une tranche de vie, inbound)

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This morning D’Espirito “Dez” Carmine knew that one of his passengers was in trouble.
Dez shifted gears of the twelve-seat bus as he came out of Revere onto the highway north, his eyes, as ever, studying the dozen passengers on their way to work, determining a snarl, a scowl or grimace, as a straight-out give-away. Oh, they were splendid facial characters, make-up aficionados, the mostly imperturbable cast for his play-going. Each one of them he knew almost intimately, their habits, likes and dislikes, their temperaments; how they showed impatience or worry. The lip biters were evident and the knee tappers, the finger squeezers and the puckered, silent whistlers. Who slept around, who was prone to wander come of an evening after work, he knew. Evidence of it came from eye flight or hair disarrangement, an early exhaustion showing itself off or a head yet rolling in a kind of rhythm. The morning body electric, he heard a voice say in the back of his head.

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All Stories, Science Fiction

Silent Treatments by Goran Sedlar

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Laughing out loud.

Rolling on the floor with laughter.

Smiley face.

This last one was from Barb and Trevor’s heart-felt like supernova.

The night was going well. He was being charming, funny and confident. His body language advertised a great catch and a man who should be forgiven one honest mistake.

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Literally Stories – Week 38

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When I visited the back door portal to Literally Stories Friday morning charged with the task of ordering random words into something a little less random my first thought on typing Week 38 was; Is there any significance to the number 38?

In short. No significance.

The best ‘fact’ I came up with was it is the probable year of the marriage of Claudius and Messalina.

Fascinating.

However if you add ‘th’ to 38 and then parallel, too, the plot thickens into something almost but not quite significant, as you now have the 38th parallel. The demarcation between North and South Korea. An imaginary line that also passes just north of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, all of which makes one wonder how newspaper columnists survived before the advent of the internet search engine? None of which leads me to this week’s litany of literary marvels that began with The Aviator.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Humour, Story of the Week

Pow Wow Travels by Darlene P. Campos

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“This truck is so old, Chief Sitting Bull drove it to his senior prom,” I said to Larry Kicking Bird as he got onto Highway 18.

“Quit your bad mouthin’ on my truck, James Eagle. How on earth do I get to Sioux Plains from here?” Larry asked.

“Easy, easy. Sioux Plains is pretty close to where Sitting Bull grew up. Put your truck on cruise control and it’ll remember where Sitting Bull’s senior prom was.” Larry sped up to about 80 miles an hour, but not long after, a cop tailed us.

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