All Stories, Horror

The Little Red Who Survived by Aleks McHugh

Now first off, thank you for caring to listen. Or I presume so.I waited a long time to speak about the conspiracy that tried to bend me to its will and deny me mine, starting with my right to self-pleasure at the age of 12, to be master of my own body.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Searching for Unicorns by Michael Bloor

Willie Ferguson lay staring at the wee cracks in his bedroom ceiling.  Like a lot of people, he hadn’t realised, til he stopped working, that he was missing something. It sure as hell wasn’t the job that he missed: he’d collected his pension with a sigh of relief. It wasn’t family either: his sister, Margaret, living behind a privet hedge down in England, was emphatically a distant relative, and should ever remain so. But Willie knew he really was missing something.

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All Stories, Horror

Watchtower by Rebecca Klassen

No one can understand why Elena stays, and neither can I. If it had been me, I’d have left; there are plenty of other Cornish seaside towns to live in. Actually, if I really had climbed those steps and seduced a sixteen-year-old like Elena did, I’d have jumped from the watchtower onto the rocks below. They were discovered in the act by the caretaker, Jim.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Doll Parts by Ximena Escobar

“I won’t talk about the past anymore,” she said. “I’m only talking about what will happen from now on. I’m using this pain to make something wonderful.”

He held her hand, like he had so many times. Her masculine hands. Creative hands for making wonderful things. Like her saddest smile.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Humour

Kingdom Collapse by Doug Hawley

On July 5 of 2033 Antarctic bases McMurdo, Davis, Casey and others reported earthquakes of 6 magnitude on the Richter scale. South Africa and Tierra Del Fuego in South America had minor tsunamis shortly after the earthquakes.  Helicopters flew to the suspected center of the disturbance near the South Pole.  What they saw was deeply disturbing.  An area of hundreds of thousands of square kilometers had subsided anywhere from a few to a hundred meters deep.  What appeared to be naked humans were slowly digging out of the steaming slush.  As the observers goggled at the scene, something like a red guided missile flew out of the depression so fast it was just a blur.  There was no safe landing place, so the helicopters which were short of fuel flew back to their bases.  When the film they had taken was released, the world observed a second odd event.

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

This is My Rifle, This is My Gun by Shannon Greenstein

“Sir?”

The Artist jumped, whirling away from the attic window out of which he had been staring.

“Stay there,” he barked, and the figure he had been sketching immediately froze, Lot’s wife on the heels of her one bad decision.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Scattered Faith by David Henson

I’ll tell you, I saw my fair share of weird. It was par for the course when I was a belief policeman. I never passed judgment.  I once tested a man whose One True Belief was a body part and a woman who worshipped a raw potato. It takes all kinds, but I moved on as long as my detector beeped twice and the OTB wasn’t harmful. If my OTBD beeped only once, I took the heretic to my district HQ. What happened next was outside my control. I told myself my hands were tied.

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All Stories, General Fiction

 The Ferryman’s Tale by Mick Bloor

To supplement my pension, I had taken a summer job: crewman and ticket-collector on the Small Isles (Rousay, Wyre and Egilsay) ferry in Orkney – I was the full extent of the extra staff required to meet the demands of the enhanced summer timetable.  It’s a fact that when you collect tickets you look at hands, not faces. So I didn’t notice him when he boarded. No car, no luggage, no band, no guitar.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Rosa Rugosa by Thomas J Daly

The spring sea lapped upon the shore of Yokohama. In the city a familiar New Year tune played over a radio. It had been ten years since I heard that song. I mouthed along the words half-remembered from nights when, in drunken stupor, my friend, the poet Sunokaze Heki, would recite tanka alongside the music.

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