Category: All Stories

All Stories, General Fiction

The Little Rules of Engagement Handbook by dm gillis

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Day #16

The Little Rules of Engagement Handbook—Rule #1: Once you have arrived at your assigned location, hunker down and wait for ancillary instructions from your Assignment Coach.

4 a.m.

The crows quarrel over dead rat scraps in the gutter.

CNN, I haven’t turned it off for two weeks. Images of desert proxy-wars, percolate through the cable; ISIS driving US Iraq-abandoned Humvees and armoured vehicles; teenage recruits firing AK-47s into the Mosul sky; American Republican Party candidates debating penis size.

The assignment is to instigate a shakeup, by diverting the ginger haired sociopath’s motorcade down the street below my window. I have his picture taped to the wall, a smug man orbiting himself. He’s been granted Secret Service protection. That may complicate things. There’ll probably be revolution if I accomplish my assignment. A master class in failed democracy, for all those who care to attend.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Can I Still Work One Day a Week by J W Kash

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typewriterOne night in a cramped office I was contemplating suicide while entering food prices into a restaurant database. I’m a manager and my neck and lower back were throbbing and aching. Scroll, click, type. My eyes felt like they were bleeding. Someone knocked on the door.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Oblique Lines by Jack Coey

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It was a day he learned too much about himself when the judges announced his drawing, 1st Place, and he heard the applause, and that night at the party, drank whisky for the first time, and loved how it made him feel. He was eighteen, and in a few more years, he flunked out of community college, and kept drinking anyway, until his wife, a local girl who gave him a son, left him after tolerating more humiliation than most women, but oh, he wasn’t done yet; it took until he lost his job as a used car salesman even though if he’d been sober til noon it would have been overlooked. He had nothing left, and sat in the common, and told passerby’s that life was unfair, and the townspeople knew who he was, and his story was nothing new.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Dope Shack by Steve Sibra

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My parents gave me a horrible name and I decided I had to get them back for it.  They were old hippies; well I guess not that old but when I was twelve they seemed pretty ancient – probably like thirty-five or maybe even forty.  To get revenge I got one of my pals to go in with me and we set out to make ourselves a dope shack; a hang-out where we did everything that was wrong and pretended that it turned out right.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Wake Up Jerry by Chris Wight

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In the beginning the days had no names. Jerry chased soap bubbles in the sunshine over freshly-cut grass, while his father strummed the guitar. Life was an easy rhythm of wonders with no conceivable end.

“Wake up, Jerry! Time for school!” his mother called one Monday morning, the same day Friday found a special place in his heart.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Week 67 – Keeping It Real

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typewriterWell this was Easter week, which means some things to some and other things to others. My only thought is, I wish I could comprehend what type of reasoning allows kids to gorge themselves with chocolate. I don’t understand the relevance. Same with rabbits! Glad to see that some pet stores are not selling the poor wee beasties at this time of year to stop idiot kids getting them as presents from their idiot parents. Anyway, I can only hope that you enjoyed your holidays in whatever way you wanted!

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All Stories, General Fiction

Newt Logic by Alan Gerstle

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Did you ever wonder what it would be like to be a newt? To reside peaceably in an aquarium, rising every so often for a gulp of air, catching a worm in your thin amphibious mouth and being generally content? I often think about that. This is about a time when I thought about it a lot. It was the summer when I worked as a student intern at a senior center near Brighton Beach. I was pursuing a social work degree at Hunter College, and sharing an apartment in downtown Brooklyn with two other graduate students. It was a lonely time for me, and I kept several spotted newts in a terrarium for company, and a five disc CD player that I had on continuously when I was home to ward off the isolating silence.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Shadow Chaser by Culley Holderfield

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Aleppo, Syria (AP) — Prior to joining the Tawheed Brigade in opposition to the Syrian government, Anwar Addat was a computer technician who never gave much thought to politics or religion.  That was before a barrel bomb delivered by a government helicopter ignited a fire that killed his wife and two children.  These days he goes nowhere without his AK-47 and body armor, and looks every bit the insurgent warrior he has reluctantly become.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Train to the City by Daniel Mark

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The train arrived on time. In all the years that I’ve had to take trains, I don’t think a damned one of them were less than a half hour late. I take this to be a good omen as I board, maneuvering my luggage through the tightly packed crowd. Winter always makes people odd and this one was particularly cold. After pushing and pulling and dodging my way past families, brooding young men and confused old women, I find my seat. A window seat, another good sign. As the train begins crawling away from the platform, I notice that the seat beside me is still empty. This trip is getting better and better, I think to myself just as a large man ambles down the walkway, turning his craggy misshapen head left and right and looking for a place to land himself. Then he sees me. “Well, hello there, fella. Looks like we’ll be riding this one together. Name’s Jim. Yours?” he mumbles out in some indistinguishable southern accent. A twang cultivated by gut-rot moonshine and the searing warmth of ignorance.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Code Blue by Tom Sheehan

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That morning, a May Saturday, when Fernando “Fred” Norstrand first put on the police uniform, solid blue deep as a line of defense, bright buttons shining gold-like running down the front straight as ideas cemented in his mind, his wife stood in the bathroom doorway in open admiration of the new spectacle. He had only recently taken off a Navy uniform, discharged from service because of injury. They loved each other that morning with a new and silent abandon, their baby son still asleep, the day already lopsided in their favor, and the man of the house about to start a new job. He had been appointed as a special policeman of the town, assigned to the lone local theater to keep the kids in line, Saturday being the toughest start of all;  popcorn, noise, kids away from parental control, let loose from their homes, very different from the few homes he’d visited during Pacific duty and the home he had grown up in.

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