Category: All Stories

All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Funeral Crashers by Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri

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My older sister Nancy and I love funerals. We go at random every weekend, ingratiating ourselves into the crowds, the friends, the family. We pretend to weep with the mourners, while we absorb things with the coldness of detectives, me in an oversized suit, borrowed from Dad. Nancy in one of Mother’s nice black gowns. We love the darkness, the garb, the somberness. The people gathered together, mothers and children, cousins, nephews, people with connections we cannot fathom. Being so close to darkness, a kind of whirl, excitement. We don’t know dead people, the wildness of loss. Mother and Dad are divorced, but that’s different. They wear fedoras and lavender and false civility. Even our grandparents still live, regaling us with tales of meeting Teddy Roosevelt and other trivialities.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Why We Haunt by Judge Jasper P. Montague, Quillemender (Leila Allison)

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Versatur Circa Quid!

Once again my four generations removed granddaughter, Miss Leila Allison, has thoughtfully left open a file for me to brilliantly emend. Before I get to today’s subject, however, I believe that I should once again introduce myself to the readership due to what I observe to be a great diminishment in the overall intelligence of the modern day public. It is I, the splendiferous Judge Jasper P. Montague, Quillemender. I died in 1912, but shortly thereafter I returned as a Quillemender Spirit. I am housed in a ceremonial gold gilt gavel presented to me upon my retirement from the bench. I’m allowed to travel ten paces from the gavel, which is plenty close enough to where my ancestor (and current holder of my heirloom gavel), Leila, keeps her Chromebook. Succinctly, we Quillemenders alter text written by the living. In a way my noble kind are the precursor of that mindless autocorrect function that gets so many of you in trouble.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Sacred, Hidden by W Tyler Paterson

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Sometimes while driving alone through the empty mountain roads, the weight of the world sits heavy in my chest and it hurts to breathe. Naked trees shiver in the wind. Leaves unlatch and write in silent cursive across my windshield. Their tongue is the sacred, hidden language of the earth.
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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

How to Write a Hit Song by Les Bohem

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Laying the Groundwork for a Hit

  1. Choose between digital or physical production.
  2. Select a theme.
  3. Draft lyrics that are timeless.
  4. Split your lyrics into syllables on staff paper.

Composing a Hit

  1. Set the tempo.
  2. Write the bass line.
  3. Design a catchy melody.

wikiHow, “How to Write a Hit Song”

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Odd Legend And Fuck All Else by Hugh Cron – Warning Adult Content

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Barry sat on the bed as he read the letter.

“Well that’s old Jim away.”

“Your granddad?”

“Yep.”

She sat down and put her arm around him.

“Are you okay?”

“I suppose so.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Still Life by Frederick K Foote

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“Boy, you better have your black ass down here tonight, or your ass is grass, nigger. You hear me, Ellis?”

That’s my main man, Mac Brown, the Big Sound from Downtown. He got a right to be pissed. A month ago, I missed our best bud, Willa Wright’s art show. My demons kicked in the day of the show. I don’t know why. I woke up 600 miles from home, in a hooker’s trailer, with no wallet, no money, no phone.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Child at the Edge of the Wilderness by Harrison Kim

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Ten-year-old Josh walked to school on an already hot May morning.   The bulldozers roared and pushed along the river, clearing the bush and the cottonwood trees for new condo development.  Josh’s skinny white pony-tailed neighbour, landlord Glaser Neil called out from his yard “hey, take a look at this,” and Josh stopped.  Neil often acquired odd things.  Odd but interesting.  Neil pointed behind his lilac bush.  Josh looked over and smelled the lilacs.  Glaser motioned for Josh to come in, and the boy opened the gate and peered at the back of a cage.  “What’s in there?” he asked.  He heard a growl.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Cul de Sac by Matthew Roy Davey

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She was the last one to move in.  Most people moved in the day the builders handed the keys over, but her house stayed empty for a couple of weeks.  She was renting which probably explains it.  We still don’t actually know who owns the place, even after everything that’s happened.

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