-1-
It’s hard to ignore five shadows cast on your desk by as many hovering beings outside the window. I do not know if there is an achievable degree of determination to successfully ignore such a situation; if so, it lies beyond my level of sticktoitiveness.
Continue reading “billigitmania by Leila Allison”
It came to us in our dreams.
That’s how it passed, jumping from person to person, dream by dream. Some were lucky and woke with just a mild fever, but others weren’t so fortunate. They were never the same again following that dream, and sadly, some never woke at all.
Continue reading “The Dog in Our Dream by Chris Farrington”
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.
Continue reading “Sunday School by Marco Etheridge”
-1-
Famous fantasy realms are ridiculously wealthy– them with their pool parties and scantily clad underage lawsuits in waiting. But for every emerald high rise in Oz there’s a dozen impoverished lands of make believe held together by duct tape and the wages of mental illness. My realm of Saragun Springs is as threadbare and stone soup as it gets, but that might be a-changing. Yes, prosperity and the torpedoing of what little charm we have may be just around the corner. Actually, it is up in the sky–and to paraphrase Dickie Plantagenet, we aim to pluck it down.
Continue reading “Hobnob Standard by Leila Allison”
Little nugget,
When my gram kicked it, I thought I’d get her old fire gear, maybe some cash, not a cheap-o mirror.
I grasped the trinket by its grimy, beige handle, ran my finger along the pimply red rhinestones. Not gram’s style. Nor mine.
Maybe it made the viewer look particularly snazzy. I gazed in. My hair frizzed like limp fusilli and my meatball-colored eyes leered back. Disappointingly accurate. Three fresh scratches gaped across my clavicle, like a tiny demon had scraped its pitchfork against me.
My fingers fluttered to my neck, but the area felt apple skin smooth. The marks didn’t show in my bathroom mirror or later, in the back of my spoon as I shoveled in dinner.
Weird.
I didn’t think about the scratches again until midnight. I was hauling trash to the dumpster, flickering street lamp barely lighting my way, when a stray cat lunged and gashed my neck open.
Just what I needed in my grief: toxoplasmosis.
I ran to the bathroom, blood dripping into the sink like dying rose petals as I dabbed at the scratches. Three scratches.
I grabbed gram’s mirror. It revealed the scrapes alright, but they weren’t scarlet, as they appeared in my bathroom vanity. The bruises shone pink and faded as dollar store carnations, like I’d had the marks for days, not seconds.
Breathing yoga-deep, I clutched the countertop. This mirror showed the future. Of my face, anyway. I eyed it again, plastic and homely as ever.
Touché, gram. Touché.
After that, the mirror lived on my nightstand. I gave it a looksie every morning because you never know, right nug?
One day, a blizzard ripped across the state, snow piled high on the road like a kid got happy with a frosting tip. I planned on going out, determined not to let a little dusting halt my fun, but then I looked in gram’s mirror.
My right eye was a bloody, scrambled egg. My left ear dangled, a piece of chop meat the butcher hadn’t quite cleaved. I stayed home that night, scrolling through channels until the newsman announced it. A massive whiteout caused a twenty-car pile-up on the highway.
Praise be, ugly, magical looking glass.
So anyway, if you’re reading this, it means I’m gone. Thanks to this mirror, I went out as a decrepit vulture and not as a young, smooshed-up pear on the interstate.
My gram never explained things, so here’s me correcting that. Keep the mirror close and it’ll get you out of a few scrapes, too.
Love you,
Gramma
P.S. Remind your mom to keep my casket closed. No one wants to see a shriveled up bean.
Image: Google Images – Hand held mirror with ornate frame and handle
The succubus child was not supposed to fall in love.
“Demon, please, a child for my wife,” the desperate man pleaded.
The succubus child was not supposed to fall in love.
“I have tried and tried and tried, Demon, but I cannot rear a child. Please, for her. She deserves this happiness.”
The succubus child was not supposed to fall in love.
Continue reading “Love by Djordje Negovanovic”
When I walked into Helen Arbuckle’s room, I knew something was wrong. Her eyes were bright. She was watching television and smiling. She was alive. And I mean that in a way that the nearly-departed are not supposed to be alive. She was dying, for Hell’s sake. The least she could do is have the decency to look the part.
Continue reading “A Bad Day for Death by Thurman Hart”
Release is real. These days there aren’t many left who’ll deny that. We’ve all had our glimpses. Maybe you caught someone’s eye at a bus stop in the rain, and when they smiled back it was like something heavy tearing loose inside you. You felt the future drain away through your fingertips. Not your future, the future.
Continue reading “A Latecomer’s Guide to Release by Greg Golley”
Ancient starlight is a key ingredient in Magick. Forget sunshine; aged roughly eight minutes upon arriving at Earth, it’s too raw and is to starlight what prison wine is to hundred-year-old cognac. And culling the rays that bounce back off something like Saturn only adds a few meaningless hours to the photons. Yes, the older the better, all the way from Deneb and Andromeda, Rigel and Beteguese, the maniacal red-shifted glimmers that howl silently through the endless now, the insane shine of forever.
Continue reading “For Whom the Elm Toad by Leila Allison”
Michael Bloor is a regular contributor and commentator on the site. When we received this piece we were amused and entertained. It’s clever and witty. However, we do realise that stories about writers can have limited appeal and so we thought a Sunday Whatever was the place to put it. Too good to miss so here we go:
***
Authorship Down by Michael Bloor
I awoke, sprawled on the beach like a dead starfish in the morning sun. A hand gently raised my head and an old-fashioned enamel cup with a black-lined rim was laid beside my lips. My tongue was swollen and my throat was dry as cat litter. I drank and squinted up at my benefactor, a shimmering shadow haloed by the sun: ‘Who are you? Where am I?’
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – Authorship Down by Michael Bloor”
literally stories 