Category: All Stories

All Stories, General Fiction

Rage by Paul E Goldberg

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The guitar player began. The two younger women, the singers, looked to the dancer, then to one another and laughed. Everyone knew the dancer was crazy. What would happen tonight? What madness revealed when, after standing stock still, face intense, concentrating, ugly, man-like, she would explode in sudden but precise movement. Arms and legs lashing out, a burning, erotic anger masked behind the frozen expression on her face. After moving across the stage, she would come to a sudden, freezing halt, slamming her foot down on the floor—loud. The women startled even when they knew it was coming. The dancer looked at the man—her partner. She always chose a younger man. He looked back, smiled but at a distance. She glared at him then suddenly moved again, whirling, white skirt flaring out to reveal a flash of the carmine lining.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Chalatenango, 1983 by J. Paul Ross

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Warning: Extreme content – see tags.

Running.

Gasping.

Retching, the son of Olayo Mejia charges toward his village amid the stench of burning wood and searing flesh. The odor is heavy and it is moist and it fills the valley beneath him in a haze of squalid yellows and heavy browns. It covers the fog-laced treetops and mingles across the terraced fields and, as gunfire again bursts over the Salvadoran hills, its reek grows sharper with every footfall and every wild swing of his arms. Its taste lingers in his mouth, its fumes choke his lungs and he wants so much to pause and catch his breath. He wants to fall to his knees and weep in terror but he knows he cannot, for the helicopters are prowling above him, the smoke is billowing high into the morning air and his home is very far away.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Why Is Jake Always So Lucky? by Paul Crehan

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As a kid, he was the one who found nickels, dimes, and quarters on the sidewalk, got two candy bars to fall into the well of the vending machine when he had only paid for one, and succeeded where so many others had failed in bashing open the piñata. Two or three times, when he wasn’t ready for a test, the teacher wouldn’t show up. Test cancelled. Stuff like that. His whole life.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Humour

Late-Night Theological Breakthrough by Michael Bloor

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The pub had closed, the last bus still hadn’t arrived, the thin drizzle gave way to rain of biblical ferocity. Jimmy stood sheltering in the entrance to the dress shop, like a novelty dummy, while Willie (his tongue loosened by seven pints of IPA) explained about the likely existence of A Deid Agnostics’ Processing Panel.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Narrow Gauge by Ed N White

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On this first day of May, I return to the abandoned farm I once owned and stand in a pasture now overgrown with creeping jenny vines and clumps of brilliant yellow buttercups. Slatey gray clouds collide above me and fold into each other in a birdless sky. A whispering breeze ruffles the tops of the leafing red maple trees. Half a century ago, I found an abandoned narrow-gauge rail track set on hand-hewn locust ties at the back of the farm. I was unaware of their presence until months after the purchase and could only guess their purpose. Shuffling several ideas, I thought they might have been used to bring wheeled carts of fieldstone or firewood to the bottom of the hill. Or, perhaps maple sap to boil in large vats for spring syrup. I enquired at the local historical society and asked my neighbors, but no one had an answer, only more guesses.

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All Stories, General Fiction

March by Sarp Sozdinler

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March was a bitter month for everyone involved. Jodi was born into one, like Eric Clapton, her childhood idol. In another March, thirty years ago, Clapton’s four-year-old son ran into a hole in the wall. The hole was supposed to be a window, but it had no glass on it. A scream tore through the house, and the mother understood right away that it didn’t come from the boy; the boy was busy plowing through the air, down fifty-three floors.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Emergence Delirium by Danielle Altman

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They found me floating face down in the motel swimming pool, a seedy place off the Sunset Strip where we’d been partying. A janitor heard the splash. He dragged me up to the patio and slapped my cheeks, which was funny. I was already blue, and now some random guy was hitting me. We kissed. His breath choked me. I woke, briefly. Curled over, shivering on the lip of the deep end, my reflection rippling beneath as my lungs spasmed dry.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Humour

Garf and the Purple Pickles by Landon Galliott

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When Garf opened his refrigerator, he saw a jar of purple pickles beside the carton of expired milk. This was strange as, only yesterday, they were green. Garf stood in his itchy annoyance before the refrigerator, his red, black-striped robe hanging off his slumped body like an old, worn-out curtain.

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All Stories, auld author

Writers Reading. Review by Mick Bloor

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Re-Reading ‘Lucky Jim’

Note: This review contains spoilers.

I’m a big fan of re-reading, a sovereign cure for Life’s Disappointments. Whenever you injure your foot at the start of a walking holiday, or your team gets relegated, or the school bully turns up again as your new line manager, there’s one guaranteed restorative: re-reading a favourite story. And not just any favourite story: for my money, it’s got to be either a galloping adventure story, or a comic novel. (Notice I don’t say ‘favourite author:’ Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island,’ or ‘Kidnapped,’ definitely fall into the ‘sovereign cure’ category, but don’t ever pick up his ‘St Ives’).

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction

Remnants of a Silence by Saul Brauns

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“She was reckless and calculated. Sharp but dreamy. I think she was lost. Overcome by the world’s endless configurations.” A wave of chills swept over me. Papa was only eloquent when talking about her, so I tried to soak it all in–every syllable, hand gesture, intonation–to paint a picture of her in my head. Papa never even showed me photos, because as he said, “It’s in the past.” I had stored a few features such as angular nose and fair skin in my reservoir until then, but those were surface-level. I had been yearning for characteristics to vitalize the shell of a person in my head.

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