Author: literallystories2014

All Stories, christmas hellweek, Horror

Welcome to Christmas Hellworld: Hellweek Day One

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Still feeling a bit too gooey? Still have the urge to hug people? Don’t worry – we’re here for you. Literally Stories – Christmas Hellweek. Stories to counteract all that goodwill: Enjoy

An Introduction from David

ULTRA-BELFAST

If you’re the black sheep then any family event, gathering or occasion can feel like Ultra-Belfast.  There’s a purgatorial feel to your day when you’re plucked from your home comforts and trappings and shipped back to a time and place when your independence and autonomy was restricted.  I vaguely remember committing the first few sentences to the white page.  I’d like to say it was during the Christmas before it was published here, that would be remarkably apt but it would also be horse piss.  It almost certainly came after one of those events though. One where I looked around a table and saw variations of the same face looking back at me.  A little older, a little worn down.  The light behind their eyes, a little dimmer than it had been the previous year, or the one before that.

For anyone who doesn’t buy into it, the Northern Irish summer and in particular the 12th of July, is the ultimate purgatorial state.  Twenty-first century living grinds to a halt so a minority of over intoxicated and under informed can lay claim to everything within their eyeline in the name of tradition.  Loyal servants of the crown celebrating the victory of a Dutch King over the English Monarch.  Celebrating the victory of a protestant king over a catholic king.  Celebrating the victory of a protestant king, who led a largely catholic army, financed by the vatican.  Trying to explain it could turn you mad.

The truth of the matter is, to be Northern Irish is to live in a permanent state of purgatory.  Irish by geography, British by rule, your individual identity, independence and autonomy permanently in flux and controlled by calendar and tradition.  I’m ten years older than the writer of this story.  If I had to try, I don’t know if I could write it now, but I still relate to it because I’m still sitting at that card table waiting to go all-in.

Welcome to Ultra-Belfast…

Ultra-Belfast by Dave Louden – Adult Content

Image: Scary Christmas Baubles from www.freepik.com n.b. This is an AI generated image.

All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever: Not Quite the National Treasure by Geraint Jonathan

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Well this is a bit of a different piece – but that’s what the Whatever post is all about. Ladles and Jellypoons we give you an essay by Geraint Jonathan.

A pioneer in the use of manacles, Richard Topcliffe’s imagination knew bounds, if you’ll not forgive my saying so.  He was a man who lived and breathed his work – going so far as to design his very own ‘torture-machine’, compared with which, in his own words, “the rack is mere child’s play.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Are You Ready Annie? by Martin McNeil.

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Annie awoke to the feel and smell of soft, clean linen against her skin. Yesterday’s flight had exhausted her, but she’d slept well, and felt rested. She lay on her back wriggling her toes, deriving a childlike pleasure.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Short Fiction

The Promise by Russell Fee

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The lake breeze chilled the back of his neck as he bent over the boulder to inspect the patterns of lichen spreading on its surface like an ink spill. This was the one he was to find. As the receding waves sucked the water from the sand around it, the rock sputtered and gurgled as if it were alive, a nursing infant or a dying soul. He had trekked almost three miles from his cottage to reach this point on the beach, the farthest out on this side of the island. From here it was fifty miles to the mainland over the surface of an inland sea. He removed his clothes, tossing them into the water. He was to carry nothing. Standing nude, he waited, facing the dunes that rose to the stretch of trees above the beach.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Notion by Chris Klassen

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“It’s a lovely day,” my friend, a small sweet person, said to me as we stood on the lawn next to the sidewalk on a warm morning, “and I want to take you to my favourite place, a place I frequent for peace and calm and gentle thinking.” I had never heard of this penchant of hers before, even though we had known each other for a long time. She began walking, meditation-like, with soft quiet steps, and I followed more clumsily. The sidewalk was dust-swept and the grass on each side was manicured meticulously like it had been treated with scissors, like a hair stylist had trimmed it instead of a landscaper. We walked silently for a minute or two.

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All Stories, auld author, Writers Reading

Writers Reading – Review by Dale Willliams Barrigar 

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Kafkaesque

Franz Kafka has a sixty-something-word story called “The Watchman” in the translation from German. In this piece, the narrator keeps running back and forth in front of the watchman in order to taunt him, while also being terrified that he might be arrested at any moment, but unable to desist. In sixty or so words, Kafka encapsulates the outcast outsider, the paranoid underdog known as the modern human being: the contemporary everyman.

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All Stories, Science Fiction

Human Resources by Salena Casha

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The first message on Elana’s iCom pulsed red as she stepped out of harassment training. This job gave her no time to breathe. When she’d signed on, they’d told her the cadence would be intense, like drinking water from an Old World firehose. Ironic, for obvious reasons. Just the thought of filtered droplets made her throat hum. Given the time, given her title as Head of Human Resources and Logistics, making jokes about water wasn’t ever in good taste.

It was her tenth day.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, Fantasy

Baby Blues by Jack Powers

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Cass had been on the Cold Case Time Travel squad eight years when I replaced her partner, Hoss. We’d done things differently in Present-Day Homicide so I shut up and listened. Cass was a pro, by the book mostly–she could even fix the damn machine! And since no other towns could afford the traveler fees, we’d be in ’60s Harlem one day and ’30s Greenwich the next. I’m guessing they brought me in for the Harlem cases. Brothers don’t tend to open up to two pale folks from the future. Of course, they weren’t supposed to know we were from the future, but occasionally our Era Lingo implants malfunctioned.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

The Horrible Relocation by Marco & Liam Etheridge

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A cross-country move is a big change, I get that, but no way I deserve this nightmare I’ve landed in. The relocation wasn’t even my idea. Doctor’s orders, right? The doc said I needed a drier climate and less stress. And the move did lower my stress level, at least initially. Putting three thousand miles between me and the cops, that’s a hidden bonus. Needless to say, I didn’t mention that to the good doctor.

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All Stories, General Fiction

War Games by Alan Rice

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Sammy was often mistaken for being younger than he actually was. He was short for his age, and skinny, and wore black-rimmed glasses and white shirts buttoned up to the very top. He had a high, broad forehead and his face narrowed down to a pointed chin; his big, dark eyes were set very far apart, halfway between the brow line and his chin, and his mouth often appeared little more than a dot beneath a small, sharp nose. His hair was black, long, and unstyled; it just hung from his crown like a toupee that had been put on wrong. With a pair of pointy ears, he would have made the perfect cartoon space alien.

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