Category: All Stories

All Stories, General Fiction

It’s Never Too Late by Tim Love

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With most first dates, I knew within seconds that we wouldn’t meet again. I didn’t feel that with Janet. Except for a few wrinkles, she could have been years younger than me. Maybe her eyes were too far apart and her mouth too narrow, but when she smiled all her features worked together. That said, getting her to smile was a challenge. We exchanged questions about each other, learning nothing more than in our online profiles. I couldn’t help studying her again as she walked to the toilet – her bright floral dress showed off her figure (was she rolling her hips?)  and her long hair was jet-black. Waiting for her to come back, I decided to raise the topic that the dating site matched us up with.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Tea for Two by Rachel Sievers

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The door opens, the day is warm and the sun is already rising burning off the last wisps of fog. The child moves over the threshold holding a tortilla she found in the pantry. Last week the food bank handed out tortillas and she had filled her backpack full of them. Tortillas were good with anything from beans to peanut butter. This morning it was plain but she did want to wake any of the guests from last night, still asleep on the floor. 

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Goomba Columbus by Lenny Levine

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Yo, Skeevy! C’mere!

Skeevy!

Whatta you starin’ at me? You don’t like it when I call ya that in front of that skank you’re hittin’ on? (’Scuse me, honey, no offense.) Better I should call you Sir Vincent Schiavoni, your Royal Friggin’ Lordship? Get your ass over here, okay?

There you go. What’s ’a matter, you ain’t got time for your Uncle Sal no more? C’mon over to the end of the bar so we can talk.

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All Stories, auld author

Auld Author – The Bamboo Doctor by Stanley S. Pavillard by Diane

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We often talk about getting lost in a book. It’s a beautiful idea. That someone’s prose is so convincing, so overwhelming that you lose touch with reality. One of my favourite authors of all time, the late great Sir Terry Pratchett, could make you believe. I was in awe of the Great A’Tuin, amused by the Unseen University and disgusted by the sluggish flow of the river Ankh through the capital city. But, much as I loved those books and the sites and sounds of the Discworld – how beautiful is the Rimfall?-I couldn’t honestly say I was lost in them.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Beast of Burden by Tanushree Mukherjee

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It was narrow, stuffed chock-a-block with all manner of drug-related paraphernalia. It was a ‘smoke and gift shop’ in name, but sold everything from oil burners to sexual performance-enhancing pills. At some point, there had been a debate on whether the store was allowed to stock condoms. But I was only half listening by that time. My first impression, when I had walked in on seeing the ‘now hiring’ sign, was that it was too brightly lit. The illumination was plain white light of the kind that seems to render everything naked. Everything from the owner’s greed to make money off people’s weaknesses to the stark depths people sank to, to fuel their addictions.

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All Stories, Horror

To Martin’s Farm by Travis Flatt

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Hell is a frozen lake.

Crashing from the far end of the house. It’s my wife, Anna, dragging the boy inside from the garage. She’s plucked him up from school on her rush home from work. They’re shouting at each other, arguing, both near tears it sounds like. I reach over and slap the bedroom door shut. On the bedside table, my phone screeches the alert siren again. Any minute now, my wife will appear at the door and tell me to get up.  The siren alert wouldn’t let me sleep, so while she was gone, I hopped up and packed–or, hit, that is, the things I need to keep here, be sure she doesn’t take: a kitchen knife and an extension cord. Anna flings open the bedroom door;  the knob spikes sharply against the wall. “Lee, get up. We have to get ready.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Final Meeting by Ian Forth

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He wasn’t looking forward to the meeting with her, which had been arranged for four o’clock. When in her presence, he felt he was under a malign spell. He would look at his feet or the ceiling, anywhere except at her face. When she was talking, the muscles in his face contorted into a sneer, over which he had no control. His replies became monosyllabic; his voice flat.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Lakota Betty by Tom Sheehan

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It had been about 20 years since the ignominious raid on the Indian village at River Hill had taken place. The army captain, Gregory Merton, who led the raid, and all his officers, and supposedly all but one of the enlisted ranks, had been killed in later actions. The sole known enlisted rank not dead was a retired sergeant, Martin O’Keeffe, who told the discharging officer on the day he left the army that there was one other witness to the raid, and he hoped she was still living.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Clean up in the Meat Dept. by J. Bradley Minnick

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I see her in the supermarket. She wears an oversized pink sweat shirt displaying two big cloth cut-out letters that signify sorority. She is maybe 30, beautiful, and not alone.

Her cart rattles against the unevenness of the shiny supermarket floor. A large man, her boyfriend I imagine, dressed in unmatched wrinkles, stands facing backwards wearing a backward baseball cap on the front of the cart she pushes. I watch as he cleans off various shelves with his broad arm while he uses the heels of his untied sneakers at intervals to slow the cart. “Woody” is written across his massive gray sweat shirt.

“Woody,” I murmur to myself. 

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All Stories, Sunday whoever

Sunday Whoever

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Another chance to satisfy the nosey parker in most of us. This week we have a cheeky look at a writer who has been with us since 2015 and has two pages of diverse and excellent stories. He is a delight to work with and without further ado I give you Mr Frederick K Foote:

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