Author: literallystories2014

Short Fiction

Keep Dancing by Antony Osgood

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‘I’m so sorry, I really wasn’t paying attention,’ the middle-aged man was told by an older woman. They were the same height. George, being six foot three, had found the novelty of not looking down for their conversation quite refreshing, though he suspected in the morning he’d discover a plethora of aching muscles he never once suspected he possessed. Her attention was fixed on undexterous fingers shaking an empty not-quite-glass, a bubbly flute of clouded plastic. It was as if, George imagined, the last drop of wine had proven impossible for her to access, and for the life of her she had found no way to solve the puzzle. She kept holding the flute up to the noisy strip-light, seemingly either looking for fingerprints or a miracle. She appeared forensic in her analysis of unobtainable alcohol. George was reminded of a video he’d once seen on YouTube, of a goldfish obsessed with its image in a mirror. The poor fish had been unable to free itself from the mistaken belief it was threatened by itself. It was the saddest thing George had seen.

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Short Fiction

The Other One by Richard Leise

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The woman at the door stared at the children.  She was pregnant.  Seven months low to the ground with what she knew to be a boy.  She ran a hand up and down her stomach.  It had snowed overnight, and it was snowing still.   

The boy and the girl were sixteen or seventeen.  Maybe younger.  Neither was dressed for the weather.  Blue jeans and black t-shirts.  Black sneakers. 

“They want to come in,” she said. 

“Who did they say they were, again?” 

The woman looked through the glass eyehole, past the strange children.  A white horizon absent direction.  There were no tracks in the snow.  It was windy, and the wind pushed and pulled the fallen snow.  Still, it would have been nice to see tracks.   

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Short Fiction

Wig Shop by Jon Fotch

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He sat on the couch with his arms crossed around his middle like he was hiding something precious from some malevolent authority.

“I think I might have gone,” he said.

In a moment the water stopped to a drip in the kitchen sink.

“I’m coming,” she said.  

She went to him compressed by the years. Shrunken like wool in the dryer. Her shoulders pushed down from holding all the clouds above the world.

She helped him to the bathroom.

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Short Fiction

 The Girl Who Does Not Exist by Kaela Li

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It is far too quiet for a room with two people, a room where the brush of bare feet on wooden floorboards struggles to fill the air. A room where dim, flickering shadows writhe unbidden across the wall, called forth by a candle sputtering futilely in the corner. It is the silence of empty air where people ought to be, and the bar is fully brimming with it.

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Short Fiction

Step 13 by Joe Jablonski

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Marku 3 was a planet with a sun in eternal eclipse.

I landed there just over a week ago, careful to make camp within a small clearing in a forest full of pale, leafless trees. It was midday. It was brisk. There was a calming eeriness about the way the dim orange sunlight painted everything in shadows.

On that first night a group of the planet’s natives came to the camps’ perimeter and watched me in wonder. They were primitive with skinny inverted legs, bulbous heads covered in wire-like hairs, and a single eye embedded within the center.

They communicated amongst themselves with clicking noises made by tapping two bone plates on the inside of their knees together.

One came as an emissary, approaching within feet of me. As it stepped within the harsh glow of a floodlight behind me it suddenly froze.

It’s single eye dilated. Every hair was out like spikes.

It started with a low rumble in its chest. A soft frequency vibrated inside me, growing stronger by the second.

It was warm.

It was mesmerizing.

A dopamine rush flooded my system. Nothing else existed but ecstasy.

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Short Fiction

Borrowed Time by Rob O’Keefe

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“16 years? Seriously, 16 years? You’re killing me!”

Why do they always yell? I didn’t know this guy, but I knew his story. He was in over his head. That’s how it was with most clockers. Give ‘em a second, they’ll take a year, right? Okay, I know that’s not original, but it’s still true.

“Not yet,” I countered. “Unless you keep borrowing more than you can pay back. And it’s 16 years and 47 days, plus a few hours. How do you want to do this?”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Burned Toast by Gil Hoy

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By the time Sally died, it was too late for Jack to become a better husband and too late to make amends. Car crashes come suddenly, without any warning, and can be as unforgiving as the wife of a cheating husband who feels no remorse. Jack was alone, five days after the accident, sitting in his kitchen eating breakfast and checking for the fourth time to make sure he’d turned the stove off.  He had overcooked scrambled eggs and the toast he’d made looked more like burned charcoal than anything fit for human consumption, but he’d eaten most of it anyway, spitting out the darkest of the black, crumbling pieces into the sink (after chewing them until the taste was unbearable). Those buttery, black bits were now stuck to the greasy aluminum pots and pans that lined Jack’s sink and would be onerous to get off.  

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All Stories, General Fiction, Historical

Piece of My Heart by Mitchell Toews

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On a still fall day, I walk through the woods near the river. The sun is out and this makes the birch bark shine in white vertical swipes on a background of dun and green. The river is every shade of blue, capped with white horses beneath a sky of mare’s tails.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Camel by Jay Tanji

literallystories2014

The cerulean waters of the Mediterranean splashed against the rocks below my table at the bar. I’d secured a seat on the cliff’s edge under the bamboo canopy of Ca’s Patró March, a seaside bar overlooking the popular inlet of Cala Deia. It was still early in the spring and the cove wasn’t yet filled with the typical sunbathers, swimmers, and cliff jumpers of the summer months. The bar was relatively empty with the exception of a German couple discussing the insurance package on their villa over two cañas grandes and a table of three profane teenagers sipping on Coca-Cola. I skimmed over the copy of the Majorca Bulletin strewn out in front of me, reading the garbage my fellow journalists had written for the week.

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