Author: literallystories2014

All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction

Personal Growth by Ben Fitton

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The hole was definitely growing. 

Jonty could tell, having just woken from a nap, face tingling with grass imprints and a half-crushed flailing ladybird stuck on his eyelashes, to find the hole bigger and nearer.

Jonty was seen as a shabby, acceptable kind of aristo who loitered in gardens on dewy mornings, drunk or whimsical, misquoting Homer and asking for a crustless sandwich while he sat, as squat as a stone rounded by a forgiving sea, marvelling at the stains on his tie. 

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All Stories, General Fiction

Ghost by Margaret Wells

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Text 9:40 pm “It’s not the same without you [shrug emoji].”

Text 9:41 pm, Spotify link, “Tu Orgullo” [Your pride]

Text 9:42 pm, Spotify link, “Estoy Aquí” [I’m here]

Part of me wanted to type, are you fucking kidding me, after four years, still with this bullshit? What part of “we’re divorced” is not resonating with you? The other half of me knew that there was no possible way to reply. Every reply would be the wrong reply. To respond to the substance—really, my pride was the problem, you cheating bastard?—would be to invite more back and forth. (That our split was all about my pride was one of his constant refrains.) To remind him that I’d asked him to stop sending texts like these would bring the rejoinder that he knew that already, but couldn’t I see his true and beautiful love, a true and beautiful love that existed in and around the totally incidental cheating that went on sporadically ever since we got together when we were twenty-two? Couldn’t I see that he had given me every reason over decades to fight for him and for our relationship? What was wrong with me?

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All Stories, General Fiction

Ghost of a Shark by Neil James

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The monster on the beach lies on his side – bigger than a boat, sadder than the ocean. The seafront’s deserted at dawn, so I leave my bike in the empty car park, next to the tariff sign that upsets the tourists. My shoes imprint into the wet sand as I approach him, the creature from another world. 

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All Stories, Science Fiction

Scarcity by R.W. Owen

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The forest held its breath, and so did Amelia, as she crouched in its undergrowth, heart hammering and a lump rising in her throat. She silently swore off the next fiery ache that coiled in her thighs. She listened for the delicate puff of air that would bring the spores, echoing across the pines and oaks as they descended in a curtain of death that would fell the living, leaving in their wake only the eerie, absolute silence of death. 

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All Stories, General Fiction

 Mushawie off the Hill by Tom Sheehan

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Jimmy Mac, on the second-floor porch of his Smith Road house and the early sun barely creasing the edge of Baker Hill, looked over the top of the box scores, the Sox winning their fifth in a row, and saw, for the first time in he’d later guess to be about eight years, Mushawie just coming to the bottom of the Cinder Path. Coming off Baker Hill. He couldn’t remember Mushawie being off the hill. My God! Jimmy, said to himself. Nobody saw Mushawie unless he wanted them to see him, him socked away back in on the Delmere property the way he’d been since VJ Day in ’45.


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All Stories, General Fiction

In Want of a Home by Alannah Tjhatra

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Angel was sprawled across the couch, the TV turned to Seinfeld. She had a cigarette in one hand and a magazine in the other.

“Wish you’d at least take that shit outside.” Grace stripped off her soaking coat, peeled a dead worm off the sole of her shoe. She stuck her sneakers on the heater to dry.

Angel rolled her eyes, a puff of smoke escaping her lips. “And hello to you too, baby.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Being Billy Olsen by Gerald Coleman

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“One’s real life is often the life one does not lead.”
—Oscar Wilde

Billy Olsen didn’t remember the moment he started to grow into the image everyone had of him. Nor whether other people’s “Billy Olsen” was anything like the real one, if there was one. Self-awareness was not a strength. Perhaps that’s why he confided in me.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Rence in Repose by J.H. Siegal

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John Rence, the cobbled-up person you thought you knew, now lies here charming and cold.

His voice will endure, on those many recordings, and many of you will claim, hearing them again someday in a department store or in a television commercial, to have known him.  But he was not the sloppy socialite you thought you met in bright apartments and dingy clubs.  He was in fact a marionette holding his own strings.

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