Category: All Stories

All Stories, General Fiction

The Smiling Face of Darkness Glows Green By Leila Allison

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Walking Boss Cooper (from here, WBC) attempted to lure me and Renfield from the company bowels to her palatial office on Tuesday, for a “little chat.” She did so by email. As anyone with more than ten minutes’ life experience knows, an email come on is just that–an email come on. Like the confession of true love the magical soul of an email come on usually exists only in the heart of the sender, whereas the recipient may choose to reply or (as we had) blow the damn thing off until something better comes along.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Between Sleeps by Salvatore Difalco

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There was a hole in my ceiling, directly over my bed. I’d been awoken from a deep and nurturing sleep by a whooshing sound. Air pouring in through the hole made this sound. As I rubbed my eyes, I wondered if a meteorite had smashed through the roof. I live on the top floor of my tenement and have often speculated what would happen if a meteorite were to blaze down from the heavens and smash through the roof. I arose and thanked God for no rain. Had it rained that morning my bed would have been doused. But as it was the sky presented a plentifully blue bouquet, with feathered boa clouds gently snaking over the city ramparts.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Writing

Twelve Weeks by Hugh Cron

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Week 1.

You are here now and it is you who calls the shots.

If there is anything you want to talk about, you can.

I see you’re doing very well in English. Miss Patterson is impressed by your story telling. You express yourself very well.

But that’s writing, it’s not real is it?

And even if there is some of you in there, nothing is as powerful as hearing your own voice.

When you are ready…

…Talking is what you need to do

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All Stories, General Fiction

Hey Girl by Frederick K Foote

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Mary & the Player

Hey, girl, I got to ask you something. Why was you just with that no account, broke ass, nappy headed, scrawny, low life, little Nigger?

Look at me now. I got money in the bank. I got a brand-new Escalade. I’m pressed and dressed and a Nigger with whom nobody in their right mind will mess. So, why ain’t you over here by my side drinking my liquor and setting in my new ride?

No offense brother man, but you a Nigger with a grasping look of ownership in his eyes.  You got that, “I possess you,” bad breath.  You got that property-possession funk under your arms and between your legs. You got them, “I’m going to hold you till I break you because I own you,” hands. You look like you want to wear me on your sleeve and wipe your ass with me when you’re through.  And you through when you find something new. You just the kind of Nigger I can do without.

Fuck you, ho. I don’t need or want your skank black ass.

You lie. You want me, and your mother and your brother do too. Now, just a word to the wise. One more spiteful word to me from your sassy fat lips and only one of us will walk out this place.  Look at me, now. Look at me hard. I’m the Nigger that’s not in her right mind. Try me or deny me. It’s on you.

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All Stories, Latest News

Week 159 – Censorship, Statistics and Odd-Shaped Balls

Nik

There’s been a good deal of debate around LS towers this week about censorship. Self-censorship to be slightly less vague. The conscious and unconscious decisions made by authors to tone down content to be entirely more accurate.

Swearing is the main culprit but there are others – and in most cases what it seems to come down to is the ability (or inability) to separate author and character.

Continue reading “Week 159 – Censorship, Statistics and Odd-Shaped Balls” →

All Stories, General Fiction

End of the Road by Richard Ferri

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I sit up in bed when I see the headlights of a car arc at the end of the driveway, pause for a second over the mailbox, and then stop in front of my house. I reach across the bed to wake Susan before I remember she’s not there.  Mine is the last house on a rural cul-de-sac in upstate New York. Sometimes in the summer, late at night, I get kids making out or drinking beer at the end of the road and if they make too much racket I walk up with a flashlight and ask them to move along. But it’s early morning, the week before Christmas, the kind of dry cold air that pinches your nose shut in the time it takes to check the mailbox. No one is drinking a 40-ouncer this morning. The newspaper guy used to drive by at this time of morning and slide a paper into the box, but I cut that off six months ago, when Dylan deployed. Some things you don’t want to know about. The headlights extinguish, and I can see the glint of the car chrome in the early morning moonlight. I slip my feet over the side of the bed, find my LL Bean moccasins, wrestle into a flannel robe, and turn on the light to go downstairs.

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All Stories, Fantasy

An Assassin Sent Not by the Devil, but by God  by Daniel Olivieri

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They call it the Fully Automatic Cathedral (FAC). It’s .45 caliber and can deliver the gospel at a rate of six-hundred rounds per minute. It takes wadded up pages of the Bible as ammunition and needs to be reloaded about once in a generation. The ex-Marines I sometimes go shooting with say it takes one kind of courage to shoot someone and a whole second kind of courage to get shot. The solemn promise of the FAC is that as long as you use it you’ll only ever need that first kind of courage. It’s so accurate it could send a bumble-bee to insect-Heaven from half a mile away. I currently have it set to Roman Catholic but there’s other settings. Lutheran, Pentecostal, Episcopalian, Mormon, even Mennonite. Hit someone with this they’ll probably die, but if they don’t you can bet that whatever’s left of them will be coming to church next Sunday. It looks like your average machine gun. That is, if your average machine gun were twice as big, made of solid marble, and had Aramaic verses inscribed across its barrel.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Everybody Drinks at Bemelmans by Adam Kluger

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Nothing can come when it’s forced.

Or when distractions pile up too high.

Or when the font is too thick.

That’s what aspiring writer Fin Palworth thought to himself as he looked at his computer screen and pondered over the stubborn foolishness driving his futile attempts to become an author.

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All Stories, General Fiction

All the Way Home by Fred Vogel

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“I ran all the way home, just to say I’m sorry.” The Impalas (1959)

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 It was his wife, Amylyn, who had initiated the separation. She was hoping to light a spark under his lazy butt. But instead of grasping the importance of what his wife was trying to say to him, Sean motored down to Portland and met Charlene at a vegan strip club. Continue reading “All the Way Home by Fred Vogel” →