Category: All Stories

All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever – John the Revelator by Dale Williams Barrigar

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John Lennon in his Pickwick glasses is like a character from a Charles Dickens novel, or much like Dickens himself in his concern for social justice and his endless sympathy for the literal, and figurative, orphan, outsider, and underdog. Lennon can also fruitfully be compared to perhaps the only other English writer of the nineteenth century who rivals Dickens in staying power and popularity. Like Lewis Carroll and his beloved, living Alice, Lennon’s life was all about expanding the mind, and through the mind, the heart.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

520: Don’t Touch that Dial, More Words From the TV Generation

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In Stephen King’s On Writing he mentions that he is among the last generation of writers who learned to read and write before television became a staple of American life (as I’m sure was the same in other developed nations as well).

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All Stories, General Fiction

Blood Lovers by Gerald Coleman

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At the haggard edges of New York City, the Fourth Avenue Local of the RR Line started or ended, depending upon your intentions, at Ninety-Fifth Street on the far ass-end of Brooklyn, where the city skyline was but an aspiration. You could barely see the Statue of Liberty if you were on a rooftop and knew where to look.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Dimps by Geraint Jonathan

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She gave me the grandest name. Bardonneche. Lovely isn’t it. Didn’t suit me at all. Or not so’s you could see. Would suit me even less now, pruned up bag of bones that I am. But I wasn’t pretty even then. Mind you, neither was she. Pretty we were not.

She was Cleanthes, I was Bardonneche. We became a team.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Tip Run by Alex Kellet

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I knew I shouldn’t have come to the tip on a Sunday, the queues are always massive. I should have come in the week, but I couldn’t be arsed. Yet another mistake I’ve made. Petrol is nearly empty as well, that’s another job I’ll have to do. Never fucking ends, does it?

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Silence by Rehanul Hoque

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The dimness of the room was perfect for them both. That was how she loved it; the gentle light covered up the years that had become ingrained in her skin and the weariness in her eyes. He never asked for more light. Every Tuesday, he would drop by, say nothing, and leave a wad of money on the dresser.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Mannish by Leila Allison

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I never learned how to ride a bicycle. My little sister did; during her Jesus phase Tess earned a rusty third-hander from the Presbyterians because she’d memorized fifty Bible verses. It was the sort of bike you could leave out and not care if it got stolen. Forever on foot, I excelled at heartstopping bolts across busy streets, hopping fences and creating shortcuts; I also developed a mailman’s awareness of Dogs.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Horror

Where the Dead Live by Jennifer Maloney

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My mother lives in the next town over, but she’s dead. My dead father lives with her.

Their house is small, and silent because it’s empty. The dead are quiet for the most part, although sometimes there is a sound like weeping in the bedroom and once the bathroom door slammed so hard it cracked and then there was a hole in it big enough to put your foot through, but it’s the just the wind, murmurs my mother, the same wind that skirls along her teeth, hissing through the dark cavern of her yawning jaw, a wind that bobbles my father’s empty skull and makes it nod along in agreement.

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