Growing up as a Nigerian meant that your parents filled your head with all sorts of supernatural phenomena. When we were children, my mother would tell us these euphoric stories, a lot of which kept us up all night, like they kept a lot of other kids around us up at night as they too were being told these stories in their own homes.
Continue reading “The Monster at the end of this Tale by Mohammed Babajide Mohammed”
William Wendron balanced on a wooden stool, wedged into the corner of the old pub, leaning upon the slate bar top. A crooked half smile fixed upon his face; old hands deformed with arthritis by years of toil in the damp with pick and axe. He grappled with his mug, draining the last of the sour gin down his throat. He welcomed the warmth spreading out from his gut, encompassing his wizened body; worn before its time, the pain of years of hard labour dulled under the gin’s spell. He knew he should not have another; he had promised the mine captain he would stop turning up in the morning stinking of gin with glazed eyes. Despite the ember of guilt in his conscience he shouted for the barmaid.
Continue reading “Knockers by Amy Tryphena”
Okay. I’m being serious now. Not that I haven’t been serious all along. But this I gotta say. If there’s anything…anything at all that’s important to me, it concerns this matter—this matter of the heart.
So…
Continue reading “Initiation by Fiver”
Ghosts of the old world make their presence still known upon the moors. Known by their ancient stone walls and standing stones that still litter the landscape. The walkers, incongruous in their primary colours, garish symbols of the twenty first century.
Continue reading “Threshold by Amy Tryphena”
In a house in the woods, smoke churned and twined through the red bricks and out into the cold autumn air. A very pale girl sat on a sloping hill and watched the smoke huff and puff and disappear.
She remembers now. It does not always stay with her, like a word on the tip of your tongue. She can almost taste it but in the end it evades her, staying silent and unknowable. Today is different.
Continue reading “Friendship by Brooklyn Peters”
She was the craggy-faced, big-boned, broken-nose blonde on the ripe side of 50 working the night shift at the front desk at the small New Hampshire Hotel.
Continue reading “Checking In by Frederick K Foote”
I knew I wanted her for a model when I saw the portrait selection at the Portland Art Museum. She was painted hanging out of the passenger seat of a car waving at something unseen by the museum visitors. I don’t know if I’m right, but I thought of early Marilyn Monroe.
Continue reading “Twin Sisters by Doug Hawley”
On the canvas, the sun glints off the edge of the pool where the turquoise water meets the azure sky. The palm trees almost sway in the sea breeze, the water shimmers as if tickling the sides of the pool. In a dimly lit room, towards the back of the museum, a single spotlight in an otherwise empty gallery focused its beam on a painting of a swimming pool.
To the left of the painting sat a lifeguard.
Continue reading ” Dive Right In byJames Flanagan”
Ruth is forty-six, of medium stature, with brown hair and blue eyes. She is a biologist specialising in wolf behaviour. A week ago, she received a scholarship from a private institution to write a book about these animals. Ruth maintains that by means of howling, communication can be established between our species and theirs. Wolves can pass on lessons of cooperation, solidarity and affection. The Secret of the Wolf is the title she intends to give the book. This is why she is living alone in a cabin in the woods. Having gone through two divorces, and having no children or close family, wolves became her only passion; she even confessed to a colleague that she prefers their company to that of humans – “wolves don’t lie,” she said.
Continue reading “The Wolf and the Lamb by João Cerqueira”
Saudade: (n.) a nostalgic longing to be near to something or someone that is distant; the desire to be near again to what has been loved and then lost, “the love that remains.”
Continue reading “Just Give It Time by Matthew J. McKee”
literally stories 