Lizzie’s dark curls held sparkling rain diamonds. Her eyes were bright. Julia! Lizzie often arrived unexpectedly, coming through the walls or the door.
I brought you a present. A box, Lizzie said. A little box, she added, her eyes laughing.
Continue reading “Boxes by Shira Musicant”
‘I must be the luckiest kid in the world,’ Chris thought.. Every other kid he knew had a bedtime. Not Chris. It didn’t matter if it was a school night or a Saturday night he could stay up as late as he wanted. After dinner he could play videogames until he could barely keep his eyes open or he would watch gameshows with his parents until they went to bed. Spending the night together with his parents around the tv was his favorite. Tonight was one of those nights. But like all good things it had to come to an end. Chris heard those words he dreaded to hear when they were all having fun. “Your father and I are tired. We’re going to bed. We love you.”
Continue reading “Watching It Move by Alex Reid”
Poppyseed was an orange Rufous Hummingbird, who was as aggressive and single-minded as they come, until he flew over a burning field of “wildwood weed,” one afternoon, during the annual two-thousand mile migration. Something in the drifting smoke asked “Why must you always be in such a rush, little friend–Have you never been mellow?”
The rest of the flock had avoided the field, but Poppyseed was known for his individuality and recklessness. He alone had flown above the pungent blue smoke, and he alone found himself perched on a weather vane atop an old barn, with no memory of lighting there, wondering why he had never been mellow.
Under normal circumstances, such a dipshit question would have enraged Poppyseed. But that was before a new philosophy had edged into his cut and dry, now! now! now! personality. What’s it all about? Poppyseed thought, watching the rest of the flock zoom into the distance.
“It’s about peace, love and harmony…seeking oneness with the Universe, my busy little friend,” said a human Spirit that suddenly appeared on the barn’s rooftop. The ghost had long lank hair which flowed below the brim of a floppy hat. He was wearing sunglasses that had round yellow lenses, striped bell bottom pants, sandals, several strings of beads–and if Poppyseed had known anything about human politics, and could read, he would have recognized the face of Richard Nixon on the tee-shirt the Spirit wore, with the words “What me Worry?” printed below Tricky Dick’s cartoonish visage.
Continue reading “Poppyseed and the Flower Power: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical By Leila Allison”
It had been a good summer. A little too good. Tony sat atop an obviously forgotten Frito Lay delivery behind the 7-11 and stood watch as the others in the pack looted the short pallet and took its contents to their “clubhouse” down by the creek. Raccoons do not normally have sophisticated criminal minds–pretty much smash (actually tip) and grab is their way–but that wasn’t the case with Tony. He was an abnormally intelligent Raccoon who had the soul of a bandit. Tony loved beer and food, but he got a bigger kick out of stealing.
Maybe so, and although it is never the object of a Feeble Fable to cast body shame, the plain fact that Tony was beginning to resemble a chubby zoo Panda instead of a reasonably in shape wild Raccoon didn’t weigh on him as much as maybe it should have. And the other members of his crew were getting just as tubby. Just a month ago they would have had the pallet stripped in under two minutes; now, with all the dragging bellies and the huge butts smacking into one another, it was taking twice as long. If Tony had been aware of television, he might have seen the similarity between his gang and that on the Sopranos.
Continue reading “The Raccoon and the Personal Trainer: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical by Leila Allison”
There are forces in the city greater than the stream of cars and buses charging through the streets day and night, greater than the parades of pedestrians and rows of skyscrapers towering like giant chess pieces at war, and these forces combined are nothing less than the world wrapped into a fist, lodged just beneath the surface of the earth, ready to explode.
Continue reading “The City, the World by Tim Frank”
The winter always belonged to the writers but the writers never belonged to anyone. That is why a 60-year-old Mr. Shaw sat in his two-story bungalow all alone eating flatbread with a new jar of ‘grandma’s homemade pickle’ that he had bought from the grocery store seven kilometers away. He lead a life of passion and compassion. Passion for his hobbies and compassion for… himself. But Mr. Shaw’s life, contrary to the belief of all the forest rangers who passed his ‘haunted’ house, was not empty. A murder of porcelain and granite along with the ominous howling of distant hungry wolves filled his nights like winds filled windmills. He just loved buying sculptures.
Continue reading “It’s our 7th Birthday. Thank you all for your support. More to follow. Come back on Saturday!!”
Georgia was being difficult before we landed in Dublin, which was nothing new. She changed and became assertive the second she was promoted to Deputy Head at her primary school; she even adopted a power walk. It’s true the flame of our marriage no longer burns like a log fire, but it does glow like anthracite when fanned enough. My friends who noticed told me I’m hen pecked but as Georgia said, I needn’t wonder if I’m hen pecked, she’ll tell me when I am.
Continue reading “The Bridge at Drochaisling by Anthony Billinghurst”
The chimes sound. “I’ll get it,” Michael Robeson says to his wife, Denise. “Hospice must’ve forgotten something.” He opens the door and finds a man about shoulder-height to himself. The fellow is wearing a black suit, white shirt, and red bowtie.
Continue reading “The Devil You Don’t Know by David Henson”
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They say that trouble arrives in threes. That old bit of nonsense came to mind when a trio of my home grown Fictional Characters (FC’s) came to my office on behalf of an alien FC, also of my creation.
The petitioners were Renfield (my lead human FC), Daisy Cloverleaf the Pygmy Goatess and a Siamese Cat named Boots the Impaler. The creeps either walked, trotted or sauntered in, each one via her, her and his natural mode of locomotion. I just sat there and watched as Renfield gently hoisted the small animals onto my desk and sat on the corner of it herself.
We all sat in silence, save for Boots, who was purring. It worried me that the chocolate-point fink was content about something that I was unaware of. For I’d designed his personality to be “like Genghis Khan in an Angora sweater–soft and fuzzy, but don’t touch him.”
Continue reading “Citizen Pie-Eyed Peetie the PDQ Pilsner Pigeon By Leila Allison and Daisy the Pygmy Goatess”
Though he had spent two years as a ship’s doctor, Naudain had never in his life seen such a storm. The crew had not glimpsed the sky in two days, only dark storm clouds bombarding the sea with rain: a monotony of shadow, broken by thunder and the crawl of lightning.
Continue reading “Unbound, Toward Her Repose by Livia E. De Souza”
literally stories 