I can only see the top of my daughter’s head from where I sit. She is cuddled up to her furry orange pillow, her hair pulled into a wobbly knot.
“I heard you talking to Alena,” I say.
“Yes.” She tosses on the narrow couch.
Category: All Stories
The Wild Heart Rose of Alaska By Leila Allison
Only the dead know how to live;
Only the poor know what to give
Only lovers pray for rain;
Only dreamers strive for pain.
Jean More committed suicide on 21 May 1977. She exited life via a dozen Quaaludes and a pint of hobo wine. Jean was thirty-seven; her final action made an orphan of her seventeen-year-old son, Holliday.
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Week 157 – Crises, Opportunities and Tequila
…testing…testing…one-two…one-two…is this thing on?
Ah. Great. There you are. Seems to be working.
Greetings one and all from a very sunny and warm Cape Town. Hugh is taking a well-deserved break this week, leaving the roundup in my (barely) capable hands – so, you can expect all the usual features of a Saturday roundup minus the wit and intelligence (although I do hope to retain some level of profanity).
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The Umbrella Man by Seth Pilevsky
The App description said that the Umbrella Man’s “got what you need.” Brian Fuld downloaded the App and launched it while relaxing in bed and settling in for the night.
Brian scrolled through the typical legal jargon and tapped the “I accept” button. The grey silhouette of a man holding an umbrella appeared on the screen. Brian touched the image and the words “I have what you need” appeared. Nothing else happened. $1.99 down the drain. Brian put his phone down and gave in to sleep.
Games with Guns by Michael D. Durkota
As the pistol spun and wobbled on the oak table, Jay remembered playing spin the bottle in the basement of his grandparents’ house. They had used a glass milk bottle and it clanged loudly on the concrete floor. It was cold and musty down there, but he remembered his palms were sweaty. The girls were Dawn and Amber. He was the only the boy. Eventually, he knew, he would kiss both of them, and he would get to see them kiss each other. It was safe, because none of it was his idea, but he had to hide the tremble of his hands. Then his grandmother ruined everything. She heard the odd sound in the basement and intervened before any kissing occurred. He wished his grandmother were alive to intervene now.
Hugo and Me on the Moon by Pete Able
I was on the moon all alone. Looking out the window the weather was always the same—moony. The terrain, too, was all moony. It could have been lovely but for the utter mooniness of it all.
Where Our Lives Come From by Tom Baragwanath
We used to make tables from soft balsa. I can still picture them now; so many thousands of little tables, all the same shape and colour, stacked drying in rows inside warehouses. This was near Pattaya, Thailand, a few months after we left Myanmar. I would take the drums of lacquer – it was three years in this country before I found this word in English, lacquer – I would roll them around the outside of the building, where the high-pressure hoses were attached. I was a sprayer. Aung worked the assembly line, drilling holes for dowels. It was repetitive work, and the warehouse was sometimes so hot that all day sweat would be in your eyes. Still, we knew there were worse ways to make money.
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Memphis by Frederick K Foote
Bullet Brown sittin at the bar sparked the fire when he tells Tall Tan, “Don’t start no shit and there won’t be no shit.”
Tall Tan, the Collector Man, poured some gas on the spark. “Too late for that. The shit started when you opened your goddamn lying mouth.”
Bullet smiled his gap-toothed smile. “Well, fuck, man. If we gonna do it let’s get to it.”
Week 156 – Our Return, Our Promise And Chin Covering Bacon Fat
Hello there folks!
In-case you had forgotten, we are now at week 156 and we’re back to business as usual!!
…Do you think a prostitute ever says, ‘It’s a business doing pleasure with you.’?
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When Titanic Drowned by Tom Sheehan
We were sitting on empty nail kegs next to his icehouse on the edge of Lily Pond in Saugus, Doc Sawyer and me, talking about everything and nothing in particular. It was his way of communicating. In his gray felt hat, shirt collar buttoned but with no tie, Mackinaw open so I could see red suspenders clasped at his paunch.
literally stories 