Category: All Stories

All Stories, General Fiction

The Callback by Jack Coey

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Willard got a call back. He was surprised, his knees shook, and his voice trembled, but they must have seen something. The only thing he could think of was they must have thought his nervousness was a character choice instead of him. He told Flo about it, and she shook her head. He auditioned in the banquet room at the E.F. Lane Hotel in Keene for Foster and Lewis, two producers from Concord, who were casting a play called I Did It for Love, a three-act comedy around same-sex marriage. The stage manager was named Leon, and he came into the supermarket where Willard worked, and told him about the call back.

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All Stories, Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 148 – GMT, Halloween And Who To Blame For Everything.

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So week 148. Who would have thought it? Probably any normal…Nay, individual who had read Week 147.

That’s a nod to Nik as he likes Frankie Howard although I should have typed three ‘Nays’. (I hate the word normal. I hate the idea of normal even more!! We are all individual! And I only wrote the word to make that particular point which I have done on many occasions but it needs repeating every now and again)

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All Stories, General Fiction

Authentic by David Lohrey

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We sat at the desert inn, at the window which afforded a magnificent view onto Monument Valley, awaiting our luncheon orders. She sipped desert mint tea sweetened by hummingbird saliva and I lapped pomegranate wine, a divine concoction of pine sap sweetened by cactus rind and desert rosehips with a drizzle of wild honey, harvested not from the hive but from the beaks of mountain owl.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Washing in the Adige by Evan Massey

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Emilio is sitting across from me. I can barely understand his broken English as it mixes with his native Italian tongue. They sometimes overlap. He makes a new language of which I understand very little. He is going on about something, something about a child and a woman. He is talking fast and touching his face and tapping his mouth with his finger. I’m thinking that I am the woman that he is going on about and that he is trying to describe. The child, I do not know. Emilio is talking fast and I’m giving it my best effort.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Braelin Cordelis by Tom Sheehan

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It did not come with electricity or a smash of static on the air, but it was there. Braelin Cordelis, five minutes into the darkness of a new day, a streetlight’s glow falling through his window like a subtle visitor, was caught on the edge of his chair. Knowledge flowed to him, information of a most sublime order, privacy, intimacy, all in one slow sweep of the air; his grandson was just now, just this minute, into this world, his only grandson. He could feel him, that child coming, making way his debut into the universe, and his name would be Shag. And for this life he and Shag would be in a mysterious and incomprehensible state of connection. This, in the streetlight’s glow, in the start of a new day though dawn not yet afoot, he was told.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Testing the Waters  by Fred Vogel

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My Uncle Jonathan was a wonderful writer and an even better storyteller. By that I mean he was gifted with a vivid imagination when recounting events from his colorful past. How much of his writing was accurate has always been up for debate. But if only half of what he swore to be the truth were true, the man lived a rich and fortunate life.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Snakes & Lasses by Christopher Stanley

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Jock’s folding his pyjamas back under his pillow when he hears it. A low, growling hiss. His twin daughters are elsewhere, probably playing in the walls, so it’s just him and the mannequin dressed as his wife in the bedroom. He’s searching for the source of the noise when the duvet shifts on the bed. It’s a slight movement, like wind-ruffled marram grass, but it’s something. Carefully, he pulls back the covers, revealing the green and yellow-chevroned scales of a king cobra.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The One with the Limp by R.C. Capasso

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Enrique studied the faces around the table. The purchase committee dispensed their limited resources with utmost care. It was no surprise that the investment in another “staff” member should arouse such discussion.  They didn’t object to using androids in schools, especially in the internment facilities, where the headcounts of students exceeded all conscionable limits. Within the southeast sector alone, an android already functioned efficiently as a janitor and two, female in aspect, doled out cafeteria food.  The machine vetting the kids’ thin, government-issued bags at the building entrance possessed some enhanced intelligence.  Three monitored the scrappy stretch of ground called a play area. But to order one with a limp, for the lower grades…

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