Category: All Stories

All Stories, General Fiction

Billy Best’s Mighty Metal by Sandra Arnold

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Billy Bootle had loved music for as long as he could remember. He loved to sing along with tunes on the radio. He loved to sing with Grandma Bootle while she was baking, and whistle with Grandpa Bootle while he chopped wood. At school, Billy was the only child in his class who loved recorder lessons. Because of this, the other boys hated him. They hated him because he loved singing. They hated him because he loved books. They hated him because of his name, which they changed to Bootiful Bootle and scrawled in chalk on the playground walls with a drawing of a cross-eyed, buck-toothed, knock-kneed boy. Their hatred increased after the teacher, Miss Snafferty, asked the class what they wanted to be when they grew up. Billy told her he was going to be a singer. He was going to be a Rock Star. He was going to be famous.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Red Prints by AJ David

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The night after maami was laid 6ft deep in the ruthless earth, Tunde lit a cigarette and settled at the backyard to smoke. I observed him from the kitchen window. No, I won’t go outside and pass judgement; after all, both of us have been engulfed in our own sins since maami’s death. I was angry, though I can’t quite put my finger on the source of my anger. Perhaps it was Uncle Ade’s bellowing, demanding more beers for him and his friends earlier today at the funeral service. Ever since father’s demise, none of his relatives reached out or showed up. But Uncle Ade had the audacity to come to this house for maami’s funeral, demanding beer to be served to him and his friends. I wished for him to choke on it, his body discarded like refuse on a dunghill. However, this alone didn’t trigger my anger enough; it’s something else I an’t quite fathom.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Science Fiction

Sunday School by Marco Etheridge

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The children tumble into the church basement, pushing, dodging, and shouting. Good boys and girls, but wild with pent-up feral energy. Deacon Grumpus pauses at the top of the stairs. He understands the cacophony and approves. Good old-fashioned childish exuberance. So human, organically human, as it should be. Exactly what the Divine Order of Cellular Humans teaches its followers.

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All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever

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Today’s whatever is a beautiful piece of prose written by the legend that is Tom Sheehan. Anyone who is a regular reader will be aware of Tom’s enormous contribution to the site. Newcomers would be well advised to have a look at his back catalogue. All four pages of titles. Now, though we give you Winter Solstice 2016

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All Stories, General Fiction

Tiverton Southbound by Matthew Roy Davey

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‘Tiredness can kill. Take a break.’

The sign expanded, glowing in the beam of headlamps, and was gone.

The lights in the darkness were beginning to blur; the flecks of winding taillights, the flickering ribbon of the lane markers, merging to one. He put on some Iron Maiden to drown the hum of the engine and lowered the window for an inrush of air. The icy blast stopped him yawning. He blinked and leaned forwards.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Mordialloc Pier by Matthew Lee

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Sometimes I go to Mordialloc pier to watch people fish. I never fish myself. I hate the smell and getting my fingers sticky with bait and having to watch behind you to make sure you don’t snag anyone with the hook and permanently blind them. But I like watching. Interesting things happen when you watch for long enough. Nothing of the adventurous kind. Just odd, amusing things squeezed between stretches of monotony. I am then assured that my life will, at the very least, be filled with amusing details if I care to look. I don’t hope for adventure anymore. The feeling I get when I return home from one is dreadful. I’d like no more of them.

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All Stories, General Fiction

World Tilting at Bedtime by Katya Lee

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By the time my mother mentions falling, I let the drone of her voice fade to the unawake part of my mind. Her words are a steady hum, punctuated by rattling breaths and muffled snorts as she clears the tangy scent of antiseptic from her nostrils. If I let my gaze drift away from her paper-white figure on the hospital bed, I can pretend that I’m alone. In my peripherals, she blends into the monotony, clear and soft as water. The only thing that moves is her mouth, but her ramblings are like static – barely present, and even more unintelligible when I focus on them.

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All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever

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A Favourite Place: Innerpeffray, Scotland’s oldest free lending library, established 1680.
Article by Michael Bloor

I’ve always been nuts about libraries. I’m pretty fond of bookshops, but libraries were my first and truest love. First of all, the local Carnegie library, where I went as a little lad, accompanying my grandad when he went to change his Zane Grey cowboy thrillers. Then, the central library in town, with its reference section, and its newspaper/periodicals section, with old men dozing in the central heating. The university libraries and The National Library of Scotland, where all manner of rare and wonderful books can be summoned up from the stacks for your study, all absolutely…FREE!

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Clown and The Kid by Ashley Laughlin

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The kid had this puffy bee-sting face I wanted to shove into the toilet bowl. I liked him as soon as he came, breathless and sweating, through the door. I liked him more when he offered me a cigarette.

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