Category: All Stories

All Stories, Humour

The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place by Tony Dawson

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Clutching my holdall, I slipped into the chantry of an early fifteenth-century chapel. It was late at night, and the only light in the chapel was provided by half a dozen flickering candles that created disturbing shadows on the walls. I was interested in the tomb of a medieval knight and his lady and although I had never felt comfortable in the presence of death, even in the daylight hours, if I had come during the day, I would have been spotted by the sacristan and asked to leave.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Telling Two Granddames Apart by Tom Sheehan     

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She was different from my father’s mother, Mary Elizabeth King Sheehan right out of Cork. There was an elegant thirty-year widow for you, tall and gracious, precise of language, with her little black widow’s hat on her head and the shiny glasses on her nose and a bread roll or two in her pocketbook whenever she supped outside her Somerville home. Her pocketbook was always black. It always shone the light around it. A touch of new leather at her hands as if a bargain had just been made. At Ginn and Co. in Cambridge, she was a bookbinder, for more than sixty years eventually, and never baked a pie in her life it seems. Or baked bread. But she could wash your feet and scrub your back on a visit with her slender fingers and make you feel new all over.

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All Stories, Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns- Hi, I’m Stacy by Nyx-Bean

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Quite often a writer will streak across our virtual sky, a word comet, who graces our viewing for a while before moving in. From late 2016 into ’17, Nyx Bean gave us four memorable stories, and it is a shame that they should sit in the vault, alone, neglected.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Final Frontier by Doug Hawley

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Sally got home from her nature guide conference after being gone for a week.  She was surprised to see an envelope with her name on it in Duke’s handwriting propped up on the phone.  He used to send her little love notes, but with his recent problems, he had dropped the habit.  Could he finally have some good news?

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Whole Me, the Whole She, the Whole Nine Yards by Antony Osgood

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For an ugly man making minimum wage in his thirties – okay, then, mid-twenties – it is a hard life – for a man who could do with a change of apron, you’re full of mucky questions. Rather than stare at me and pepper my face with questions, you could be busy changing blown bulbs, or turn up the café’s heating, maybe put the clock right, or making a decent cup of coffee. Maybe you’re simply the curious kind, or have learned to believe I am, as your only customer, late at night, your business. Perhaps my being alone is nothing less than an invitation for you to make enquiries while you run your eye over me. What’s the unshaved old man doing out so late at night in Brighton on a wet weekend in March? Shouldn’t he be thinking about escorting his accent back to Lincolnshire? Has he no home to get to? Where is he staying?

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Long Way Home by Tom Sheehan

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The sun warm, the air pleasant, but me like a beggar lost in thoughts, I stepped up to the back door of the old farmhouse on Route 182 in Franklin, Maine. Home at last from the army was topping off my day. Coming home from military service, I’ll swear forever, is better than birthdays, weddings, or vacations.

Or should be.

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All Stories, Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Word Puppet by Nik Eveleigh

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Word Puppet by Nik Eveleigh is something I can relate to. Writers create characters and then take the job of their God and that of whatever Universe the character inhabits. Even though we control the action, no one can be certain exactly what kind of God is in charge of her/his reality. Does your God care about you? Or are you stricken with a God who has a nifty twist in mind and you are nothing but a means of arriving at it?

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Outsider by E. P. Lande

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He stood there, at the door, welcoming his guests. Each, he greeted by name, repeating that he was glad to see them and that he hoped they were well and enjoying the holiday season. He had invited everyone he had known over the many years he had lived in the town, as well as some with whom he had only recently become acquainted.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Whispers in the Grass by Tom Sheehan

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At first, long before he became aware of whispers, the stones in the cemetery trembled at his touch; not all of the stones, but only those on graves belonging to people he had known in life: comrades, teammates, family members, girlfriends, lovers – or the stones memorializing those who hurt him in life or those he had hurt. Once in a while he never knew what the difference was.

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