Category: All Stories

All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 508:Inspiring Words From the Past; New Inspiring Words and Remembering a Friend

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Inside Information Inspiration

At the start of his career Hunter S. Thompson typed copies of famous novels in effort to gain a “muscle memory” of greatness–Gatsby for instance; the whole thing, seeking the inspiration; how it felt to write the powerful words. I have never gone that far, but I do surround myself with what I think are great words and images. These are pasted to my walls along with what I consider fine art. Visually, I have (among many others) Van Gough, Picasso, Dali and Giger prints as well as a large Shakespeare poster (whose accusatory eyes tend to follow me for some reason) on my walls. But it is not all highbrow, because I also have stuff like Elliott the Pigeon (of this wrap’s header), “Dogs Playing Poker” and a poster for Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster on the same walls

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All Stories, General Fiction

In Want of a Home by Alannah Tjhatra

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Angel was sprawled across the couch, the TV turned to Seinfeld. She had a cigarette in one hand and a magazine in the other.

“Wish you’d at least take that shit outside.” Grace stripped off her soaking coat, peeled a dead worm off the sole of her shoe. She stuck her sneakers on the heater to dry.

Angel rolled her eyes, a puff of smoke escaping her lips. “And hello to you too, baby.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Being Billy Olsen by Gerald Coleman

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“One’s real life is often the life one does not lead.”
—Oscar Wilde

Billy Olsen didn’t remember the moment he started to grow into the image everyone had of him. Nor whether other people’s “Billy Olsen” was anything like the real one, if there was one. Self-awareness was not a strength. Perhaps that’s why he confided in me.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Rence in Repose by J.H. Siegal

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John Rence, the cobbled-up person you thought you knew, now lies here charming and cold.

His voice will endure, on those many recordings, and many of you will claim, hearing them again someday in a department store or in a television commercial, to have known him.  But he was not the sloppy socialite you thought you met in bright apartments and dingy clubs.  He was in fact a marionette holding his own strings.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Joker by Kaela Li

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Our love language is card games.

Idiot expresses our affection and respect, BS is our way of checking in with each other. War to express our shared frustrations. Spit and Blackjack to say hello and goodbye. A jack secretly gifted in the hallways between class is an inside joke. A queen is empowerment, when the hours get too long. A two is permission to rock the boat and get wild.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Sin Eater by Tarri Driver

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I once was a young woman who, for some years, didn’t eat animals in any shape or form. I felt irresponsible and cruel eating them. That’s not the whole story, but that’s the relevant truth. I was troubled knowing that there were animals living in suffering on gridded farms overflowing with flies and shit as far as the eye could see. I didn’t want to ingest all of that pain, brutality and filth. That was too much for me to eat.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Three Fishermen by Tom Sheehan

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There were three of them. There were four of us, and April lay on the campsite and on the river, a mixture of dawn at a damp extreme and the sun in the leaves at cajole. This was Deer Lodge on the Pine River in Ossipee, New Hampshire. The lodge was naught but a foundation remnant in the earth. Brother Bentley’s father, Oren, had found this place sometime after the First World War, a foreign affair that had seriously done him no good. But he found solitude abounding here. Now we were here, post-World War II, post-Korean War, Vietnam War on the brink. So much learned, so much yet to learn.

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All Stories, Science Fiction

Warmth by J.H. Siegal

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Asatta fussed over her warmth-membrane and scanned the flat horizon of the little planet, searching for a spark of orange light. Blue wisps of ice and dust curled about the skyline. Anjett was late returning. Soon she would have to enter the dwelling and close it off, leaving him to the intractable cold of the planet’s night.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Ghost of Van Gogh by Dale Williams Barrigar

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An Empty Family Cabin

I arrived after midnight. I found the key on the peg in the unused barn using the flashlight on my phone.

There was a blanket of stars so thick I stood in the barn door staring upward at the swirling white masses for a long time after I found the key. The shadows in the old, haunted barn had made me think of the birth of Christ story as I remembered all the departed members of my family.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

A Sharp Knife for Cutting Limes

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I probably wouldn’t be in Mexico if there hadn’t been a knife on the counter at the Bad Dog Bar last Tuesday. I been going to the Bad Dog for two years, since I been working the graveyard shift at Drake Manufacturing. If you ever spent eight hours attaching table tops to the leg frames, you know why that kind of work goes better if you got a couple beers in you. One of the evening bartenders at Bad Dog is Hitch. He was working last Tuesday with Sheila, who waits tables. She ain’t much of a waitress, to put it gentle. She gets orders wrong ever night, even in a place like Bad Dog where most everbody orders the same cheap beer. Sheila’s popular, though, with them low-cut blouses. Most of the Bad Dog customers are guys don’t care what they’re drinking as long as they’re looking down a woman’s blouse. That’s one reason my brother liked Bad Dog right away. Plus he didn’t have to walk far after work. Then he got me to going. And I gotta say about Sheila and them low-cut blouses, when you look down that valley, you know there’s a better world waiting when you get there.

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