She bought it at the annual Presbyterian rummage sale. The small handwritten tag said 75 cents. The little girl who was watching the money box smiled at the 25 cent tip. In the end, they both got what they wanted. The little girl was a dollar closer to going to college, and the old woman got a small part of her childhood back.
Continue reading “The Vase by Dennis Kohler”
John works in the vampire processing room. A beep sounds and an open box rolls in on a conveyor belt. He grabs a stake with his left hand. Holds his mallet with the right, and drives the stake through the vampire’s chest. Then he hits the large red button, signaling he’s ready for the next. Mallet, stake, button. It’s how he survives. Mallet, stake, button.
It’s morning now, and he’s waiting for the battered old Ford truck that picks up factory workers.
Continue reading “Mallet, Stake, Button by Ed Kratz”
The maiden waits for the unicorn on a mossy stump.
She’s naked – that part was important, they said, but she thinks it was probably just important to them. She refuses to cover her small breasts, because she thinks it would give the hunters some pleasure to see her try to protect her modesty.
Continue reading “Unicorn Hunt by Brooksie C. Fontaine”
This week we have another real treat when we take a look into the mind and deep thoughts of one of the founding editors of the site. The creator of Stormcrow – when are we getting another one everyone cries! – We always knew he was was a lovely person (in spite of his rugby preferences – but then he doesn’t have much choice given the land of his birth) he’s a great writer and just all round top bloke. Ladies and Gents and I give you Mr Nik Eveleigh.
Continue reading “Sunday Whoever”
I took long walks into the insomniac’s night. Wild music thumped on the deserted sidewalk. I peered into the smeary barroom window. A man in coveralls slept with his head on his arms at a table. Pool balls cracked next to his ear. Angry hairy faces, full of booze were engaged in the battle of the green felt, and blood may spill. I walked onward before I drew some menace from the watering hole. Then I met the traveler on a starless street corner.
Continue reading “A Starless Street Corner by Christopher J Ananias.”
On Saturday, Mark ate breakfast with me before heading to work, even lingering in deference to the weekend. A month earlier, I’d fled our apartment for two nights to call attention to my despair, but exactly nothing had changed. I wondered if our small life could be enough.
Continue reading “Breathing Underwater by Katrina Irene Gould”
A neighbour two down from us was the only person we directly knew who lost someone. A family member that is. Even though just a distant cousin of theirs, it tore their family apart. Just like it did many families, and how it changed the whole fabric of how we live. Looking back on it now you wouldn’t think such an innocuous job could matter so much, that it could change everything about how we live, but it did. Of course, the tragedy of so many going like that is the main thing, the sheer lack of explanation to this day and how we do things now is borderline unfathomable. Most of all though, I think about our neighbour’s second cousin, just one of thousands, an estimated sixteen thousand, but knowing someone who knew one of them, who left us on that day, just makes it so close.
Continue reading “The Trolley Workers by Paul Kimm”
Frederic was learning how to live in the nothing. The world was tactile, it was the thudding of bare feet on hardwood floors and the sprinkle of misty rain on skin, and it was olfactory, chicken cooking on the stove, peonies, paint thinner. The sounds of his parents murmuring at night and his own name in the news on TV were muffled and far away. There was pain still in his eyes and head, pain that ebbed and flowed, but in his pain-free moments Frederic was the happiest he had been in years.
Continue reading “Hands, Eyes, Feet by Annabel Moir Smith”
Lucian didn’t want to comply.
He didn’t want to climb off his horse. Take off his sword. Or throw his money pouch on the ground. He’d been searching for the petty varmint who had stolen his property all day under the scorching rays of a bitter sun. The search left him frustrated. His heavy black robes left him sweaty and tired. And, if he was being completely honest with himself, which he very rarely was, he would have to admit that he just wanted to go home and take a nap in his cool cave and forget the whole ordeal. But certain threats had been made, kingdoms put on notice, graves robbed, damsels abducted, so, unfortunately, he was rather beyond the point of simply stopping. In short, he needed his stolen parcel retrieved and a certain level of theatrics were required to do so.
Continue reading “Lucian Boneknitter and The Bandits by Austin Roberts”
Hwang Sunwŏn was born near Pyongyang, the capital of present-day North Korea, and was educated there and at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he majored in English literature. He was barely in his twenties when he published two volumes of poetry. His first volume of stories appeared in 1940. He subsequently concentrated on fiction, producing seven novels and more than a hundred stories. In 1946 he and his family moved from the Soviet-occupied northern sector of Korea to the American-occupied South. He began teaching at Seoul High School in September of that year. Like millions of other Koreans, the Hwang family was displaced by the Korean War (1950-53). From 1957 to 1993 Hwang taught creative writing at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.
Among modern Korea’s short story masters, Hwang Sunwŏn reigns supreme. He was the preeminent short story writer in a nation that prides itself on its accomplishments in that genre. His coming-of-age story “The Cloudburst” is known by every Korean with a middle-school education. And he is the Korean short-fiction writer best represented in the English-speaking world, attracting some of our finest translators. This is the legacy; how did it come about?
Continue reading “Auld Author – Hwang Sunwŏn (1915-2000) by Bruce Fulton”
literally stories 