The rental car’s radio faded to static right as the interview started to get interesting. Of course, Nadine thought. The way inspiration had eluded her lately, she would expect nothing less.
Category: General Fiction
And There Was That by Adam Kluger
She pulled out the Nuclear option and tossed it on the table like the Ace of Spades.
Nothing to do but bluff.
He then called her back and said “Let’s not ruin three lives here. Stick to the current agreement. ”
“Ok, but you better make your payments every month. Get a job at Starbucks.”
“Yes. I will,” he replied not knowing exactly how he was going to do that.
And that was it.
What Gloria Said By Jon Beight
It just sort of came out.
They were sitting on the couch. Dave was watching and laughing at a screwball comedy where, during their honeymoon, the hero and his wife get their signals crossed. She winds up in Bermuda at a four-star hotel while he finds himself with the Inuit eating muskox somewhere near Greenland. Somehow, they reunite.
Abide Sister by Paul Lewellan
I stared at the black homespun dress, large bonnet, prayer cap, and starched white apron that covered her from neck to ankles. She held the hand-lettered sign that read, IOWA. I pulled off onto the shoulder. “You’re not from around here, are you?” I asked.
Theatrical Spirits by Kilmeny MacMichael.
In this year of unrest, Daniel Luis was sharing a small house with his mother, sister, his pregnant wife, and daughter. He needed work.
“You will be the new janitor at the Municipal Theater,” his uncle said, “It pays little, but the work is easy. Clean up after every performance. Do your work and be invisible, and maybe in time, I can find you something better. Here is the key to the door. They say the theater is haunted, so wear your crucifix.”
Continue reading “Theatrical Spirits by Kilmeny MacMichael.”
Standing-to at Denby’s Creek by Tom Sheehan
Willard Joseph Lord Pufferton, late colonel of the 1st Regiment of Hodson’s Horse and later 10th Regiment of Bengal Cavalry (Lancers), India-released, Asia-departed, separated from the British Army in 1870, reined in his horse at the head of Denby’s Creek as it flowed from the heart of Earth in America’s Rockies foothills.
Continue reading “Standing-to at Denby’s Creek by Tom Sheehan”
Misguided by Frederick K Foote
There’s a quick double rap on my apartment door and my son, Elijah, opens the door and walks in like he’s paying the rent. He ain’t. “Pop, what’s up dude? What’re you watchin? Why don’t you have the game on? You got beer? I know you got beer.”
He goes directly into my tiny kitchen and comes back with two bottles of beer. He flops on the couch beside me.
Under the Same Sun by Astrid Ann Larsen
Geneviève Gueron was as French as one could be. And while her peers were riding up and down the waves of hormonal instability, lamenting one second, rejoicing the next, she was simply and unequivocally in love with her life on the French Riviera. It had taken her some time to get used to the fierceness of the sunrays of the South, as the lack of obscuring buildings or tufts of sky made them bounce right off her white skin which would respond instantly with sizzling red spots. And with each day that passed, the deep yearning for her favourite dusty bookstores in Paris gave way to the undisputable dogmatic truth proclaimed by her parents, who had convinced themselves their new hometown would be kinder to them.
A Particular Kind of Scumbag by David Henson
Harold Marold was confident his new discovery was going to be big. Really big. Sure, his previous inventions hadn’t all turned out as he hoped. The periscoping contact lenses caused vertigo and motion sickness. His electro-socks to eliminate foot sweat were “shocking” — as he’d found out the hard way. And his chainsaw-equipped drone for trimming high tree limbs had its drawbacks. But his current project couldn’t miss. It was going to bring about world peace.
Continue reading “A Particular Kind of Scumbag by David Henson”
Vestigial by Thomas Elson
What can loosen a bond of thirty years?
What can strengthen what can no longer be made strong?
David felt as if he were living inside his recurring fear begun decades earlier inside a chanked and abandoned farm building off a path hidden by overhanging branches surrounded by unproductive land more than fifty yards from a gravel county road when he sat on the wooded floor with the tip of a rifle barrel stuffed in his mouth.
literally stories 