As his hearing receded into the ethers, Frank’s days filled with numbing despair. He was going deaf, there was no denying it. He’d tried with what inner strength he possessed to stave it off, first by denying it completely like any sane person would do, then by telling himself he was only forty-two, things like this aren’t permanent at this age, of course it will pass.
Continue reading “Hear, Hear by Karl Luntta”
The last time Dave showed up clean, he brought bagels and a joke.
“I had to use the car key to spread the cream cheese,” he said, holding it up like evidence. “Don’t worry. I wiped it on my pants first.”
It was early—gray morning light, barely six—and we sat on the hood of his rusting Civic in the driveway, steam rising from coffee in mismatched mugs. He wore a collared shirt that still had fold creases in it. His hair was damp. He looked awake in a way I hadn’t seen in years.
Continue reading “The Summer He Let Me Be General by Jacob Alexander Cohen”
Everyone knew Gadu told lies. But no matter. He was an artist, and while nobody believed he’d run a cocaine factory in the Bolivian rain forest whilst living with an uncontacted tribe or been chief stone mason during the reconstruction of Mostar’s Stari Most, his stories were hilarious.
Continue reading “The Lives of Gadu Tom Phillips”
“What’s it like, being imaginary?” asked Lisa Hannigan.
She sat cross-legged on the edge of her bed, gazing down at her imaginary friends, Sally and Qney, who mirrored her posture on the carpet below, knees tucked neatly beneath their chins.
Continue reading “Imaginary Friends by Gareth Vieira”
“One of the most unappreciated people in the world.”
– Joshua Logan on Marilyn Monroe
“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be
absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” – Marilyn Monroe
“Will the wind ever remember / the names it has blown in the past?”
– Jimi Hendrix, “The Wind Cries Mary”
There’s something about Marilyn that can bring tears to the eyes like no other actress can do, and that fact does not arise from any one movie she made, whether good or bad, unless it’s The Misfits, her last, in which she is truly brilliant as a performer; she flowers and blooms into a new “her” in that film, especially in a few scenes.
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever–M an essay by Dale Williams Barrigar”
A Friend
Dear Readers
Before we start this week’s silliness, I must relate the news of the passing of Tom Sheehan, who died 16 October, at age 97. Tom holds the site record of 228 stories. He and I coincidentally debuted on LS in August 2015, and Tom nearly doubled my output in less time, even though he was thirty-one years my senior. I doubt anyone will catch him.
But more importantly, Tom was a fine human being: A husband, father, grandfather, historian of Saugus, Massachusetts and a veteran of the Korean War. It is not my object to create sadness because 97 is a damn good run and Tom was still writing till the end. His final submission, an acceptance, of course, The Decoration occurred this past spring.
We will be running a far more fitting tribute to our friend in times ahead, so please keep an eye open.
Leila, Diane, Hugh
Genre
I am not powerfully educated nor will my pride allow me to google every little mystery, but I feel that I have a fairly clear-minded grasp of genre.
I hear the word and Western, Science Fiction, Fantasy (not just impossible S.F.), Crime (or CMT), Mystery and so on pop into mind. In that regard “genre” is a useful list of things, and I highly approve of lists.
Continue reading “562- Remembering a Wonderful Friend and Some Goofiness Regarding Genre”
Johnny Smiles was the unluckiest person in Hope County.
How unlucky? So unlucky that the town council passed a bylaw restricting him to his home. A motion that passed unanimously. A sentence he accepted without protest.
Although Johnny was an older man, most folks considered him an overgrown child. He was brilliant, in the way all children in Hope County were brilliant—a lingering side effect of the Disaster, that tainted the drinking water and perfumed the air with long-forgotten toxins.
Continue reading ” Unlucky by Gareth Vieira”
Adult Content
For Ann
That sound, sharp.
It slices through the air like a whip. It jolts me awake. I haven’t gotten used to it. The harmattan wind blows through the open windows. I rub my shoulders and try to warm my body up. The huge searchlight in the yard casts a shadow of the cashew tree on the walls. The branches spook me. They’re wraiths reaching for me, their pointed tips looking like spears aimed at me, reaching for my soul. A woman’s scream. Sergeant Wasiu’s gun cocks again. He’s the chief of the guards – a cruel man with gallows humour. The creeping feeling rises up in me again. The night’s quietness is eerie. The woman’s screams are louder now, they’re bloodcurdling.
The gun roars. Her screams stop abruptly.
Continue reading “The Broken Piece of Me by Doyin Ajayi”
Gayle drove for two days expecting sirens before changing cars. She missed riding high in the brute rev of David’s truck, but the Corolla was less noticeable. The interior was damp and cloyingly chemical like its former owner with a spine like a question mark. But the keys had plucked easy from his pocket, not pulling a thread.
Continue reading “Retrieving Johanna by Evelyn Wall”
There’s a quality peculiarly magnificent to certain enthusiasts, particularly those whose enthusiasm tipped over into outright crankery, or what was perceived to be such. It depends, I suppose, on what it is has gripped the enthusiast’s imagination; a person’s overriding obsession with, say, the history of mirrors may induce a groan or a shake of the head in those utterly uninterested in the history of mirrors; similarly, an obsession with Shakespeare will send to sleep persons not given to worrying about Shakespeare. And Shakespeare, of all writers, has worried the minds of many. In the words of scholar Ivor Brown, “Shakespeare stands alone in his spawning of cranks and bores as well as of erudite scholars and devotees of genius.” To which one might add a note of gratitude on considering the former. Certainly the byways of Shakespeare-lore would be marginally the poorer without its tales of the grandiose and/or driven amateur.
Continue reading “The Shakespeareance of a Lifetime (Or Two) by Geraint Jonathan”
literally stories 