Category: All Stories

All Stories, Fantasy

Time Capsule by Leland Neville

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I was recently involved in the death of a man right here inside the Free Library.

He began making bird sounds near me. The cawing and trilling made it impossible to concentrate on my writing. When I moved, he followed. The bird songs grew louder and more long-winded.

My father, a Marine, told me that bird noises reminded him of a battle he fought inside a dark nameless jungle. Birds, he learned the hard way, unintentionally telegraph your location to the enemy. I am now older than my father was when he died inside our garage.

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All Stories, General Fiction

What I Will Not Become by Harrison Kim

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I’m talking with Mrs. Everton, the anorexic faced one-lung Grandmother puffing cigs by the wood stove as snow falls outside. She tells me more blizzards fell in years past, we’re not snowed in yet. She coughs, continues again in that smoky voice; my best friend Keith’s over by the fridge laughing with Lori Baker. Lori’s Mrs. Everton’s niece, black haired, pale faced, arms thin as branches stuck from a frost covered sapling, and fifteen years old. 

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All Stories, General Fiction

One Hundred Percent Sure by Daniel Shiffman

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Every evening before her bath and bed, Caroline and I cover the half-mile loop of our street lined with towering Loblolly pines and small, neat single-story brick houses. Caroline rides her tiny bike a few yards ahead of me, alternating between steadying taps of her sneakers on the gummy pavement and wobbly pedaling as her sundress flutters over the mosquito bites on her shins and ankles. A few mosquitoes hover around Caroline’s brown curls.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 494: Mendacity; Come Home Rutherford B. Hayes; Cool Stories to Beat the Heat; Health Tonics

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Mendacity and RBH

Ostriches do not stick their heads in the sand to avoid the Awful Truth. That mendacity has been around since Roman times and should be purged from the metaphor store. Only people behave that way, and when an animal does the same, you can rest assured that she/he is only mocking you.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Old Guitarist by Dale W Barrigar

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I saw a little man riding a child’s bicycle in Berwyn, Illinois, outside Chicago, on the sidewalk, along Roosevelt Road. He was carrying a guitar; this was the first thing that caught my attention. The guitar was strapped over his back. But it was also slung down partly across the side of his body so he could cuddle it with one arm while he steered the bike with the other and pedaled the small pedals with his small legs.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Cold by Terry Sanville

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Nobody hitchhikes anymore. That went out in the ’60s when Nam vets and the hippies with their thumbs out could be found along any West Coast highway. But hitchhiking in January? Even some stoned freak knew better. Besides, it’s 2024 and I’m almost 80. This is stupid, really stupid. Maybe I can blame my poor judgment on dementia. But then, if I can understand what dementia is all about, I probably don’t have it.

I’ve already bit my tongue; I taste blood. I can’t feel the ends of my fingers. I’m such an idiot.

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All Stories, Fantasy

The Universal Absorbent by Phoebe Reeves

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The City found itself with a problem: what began as a natural hole in the earth where Its citizens had thrown away their evil had helter-skeltered into a voracious toxic Abyss. The City thought it could wash it away by pouring water down the hole, but that only made the evil float to the surface. It had heard about an Angel that was sent to another place to deal with the problem of evil and that that place had finally (and stupidly, so thought The City proudly as It would never be as stupid as that Other Place) destroyed The Angel and that microscopic pieces of The Angel drifted about the land wreaking vengeance.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Birds by Sarah Macallister

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We all worried. Ever since he came back from Glasgow, Uncle Neil seemed different, jauntier. And it wasn’t just the new hat. He strutted around the village, singing in an uneven baritone. Whistling. To be honest, we thought he’d bagged someone and felt sorry for Auntie Sandy. But it wasn’t that.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Project Nüwa by Wanying Zhang

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Palms slick with sweat, Daji paced around her penthouse waiting for Goddess Nüwa’s arrival. She hiccupped and noticed writhing shadows behind her. She drew in her eight fox tails that had kept slipping from her human figure since she summoned Nüwa about an hour ago. Today marked the hundredth anniversary of the creation of Project Nüwa. She sipped from a glass of a thousand-year-old baijiu and cast her gaze over Beijing’s city lights, a dense kaleidoscope of blue and white LEDs juxtaposed against flashing neon billboards. The World Trade Center, a sleek curtain of glass walls reaching upward, stood as a commanding presence against the city’s skyline. Rain splattered against the floor-to-ceiling windows, blurring the urban sprawl below into an impressionist painting.

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