I aim my phone, recording chaos. My classmates can’t beat this, several hundred miles away. An ambulance, a snow-covered hill, a sea of Ponderosa pines, spectators and bright red and blue sleds.
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Category: All Stories
Literally Reruns – Skye Jim McKay by Hugh Cron
Long time visitors will probably have realised that I upload these Rerun suggestions in the order in which we receive them. So here we are with a look back to last year when Leila sent in this piece by fellow Editor and backbone of the site, Hugh Cron.
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Captain Carey’s Luck by Michael Bloor
I came across the manuscript below in a second-hand shop in Simla, the former British hill-station in the foothills of the Himalayas, among some papers previously belonging to a Victorian military surgeon. The ms was seemingly written in Bombay (now Mumbai) and signed by Captain Jahleel Brenton Carey of the 98th Regiment of Foot (later to become the South Wales Borderers). It is dated the 23rd of February, 1883 (two days before his death, aged thirty six), and appears to be written as a kind of testament.
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Strangerman by Arthur Davis
My nails are dirty. Always have been.
A constant reminder to Irma that I wasn’t good enough for her.
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My Plea For Solitude by Harrison Kim
Right out of high school after Dad died I inherited eighteen acres down the road from Mom’s house. Raye, who I now call “The Old Crow” married me quick after that. I started building for our great future. I framed the house around and over top of the trailer, then took the inside trailer wall out. We trucked in water from Mom’s place. My friend Elton and I constructed the septic tank, a fifty gallon drum with pipe holes at both ends, pushed down in a rocky hole. My brother Jackson helped lift the roof trusses. My life pinnacle topped there, Raye and I bouncing on the bed by the wood stove, sex and drink and rock and roll in the custom made residence, and then came three kids, Raye and my mighty sperm created them two girls and a boy.
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Sorry by Yash Seyedbagheri
People fling sorry at me.
Sorry, a person cuts in line.
Sorry, a biker knocks me over.
Sorry, my debit card’s been declined. Next customer, please.
There’s no sorry in rejected credit card applications. They speak only of delinquent obligations. Income. Balances.
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Literally Reruns – A Single Grain of Salt by Nik Eveleigh
Leila has picked out a real beauty this time. One of our most popular stories by wonderful Nik Eveleigh.
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The Plea by Craig Dobson
It began when the weather turned. That cold, still brightness had gone. The leaves’ rusted gilt was torn from the trees and scattered across the tumbling grey clouds by the winds that knocked over the bins and beat down the last of the climbing beans in the vegetable patch. The shed’s corrugated roof flapped like a fish, clanging through the night.
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Betty and My Sneakers by Townsend Walker
Betty’s blue sneakers are alongside of the road. My sneakers are red.
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Silent Retrieval by Tom Sheehan
The day had a head start on young Liam Craddock, he could feel it, and all that it promised. Across the years, on the slimmest sheet of air, piggybacking a whole man’s aura on that fleet thinness, he caught the sense of tobacco chaw or toby, mule leather’s hot field abrasion, gunpowder’s trenchant residue, men at confusion. If it wasn’t a battlefield in essence, or scarred battle ranks, he did not know what else it could be. And it carried the burning embers of memory.
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