Category: General Fiction

All Stories, General Fiction

Some Animals by Alexander Franks – Adult content

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Underneath a billboard beside the highway, an imperious impression of a gorilla spun a banana-shaped sign which read “Free cable & HBO & air conditioning.” It was early spring and the air cool and crisp, but the gorilla had been at it for several hours—throwing the sign up in the air, swirling it around his limbs, passing it around his back—the man underneath undoubtedly hot from the body heat trapped in his fake polyester furs. Cars filled with people on their way to work would occasionally honk hello, and the gorilla man would wave and point at the sign. The cars would then slowly pass, the occupants smiling and nodding but not looking directly at him.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Broke Nose by L’Erin Ogle

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“Tell me where it hurts,” he says.

Are you fucking kidding me?  There isn’t enough time for that.  But I know he’s not asking about that.  My eyes are black from the corners to across the bridge of my nose, swollen across the bridge.  My nose feels like hamburger meat rotting on a kitchen counter that we forgot to put away because Kenny actually showed up on time with the dope for once.  That meat sweated and swelled and stank for a week before we finally came down and realized there was a dead animal rotting next to the empty cans of beer and overflowing ashtrays and stacks of dollar bills from a great weekend at the club.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Dreampurple Light by Leila Allison

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Whatever happened to the power-chord?
To which my boyfriend lit a bowl

Was A Stairway to Heaven really the greatest song?
Think it over as you pass that on

Said he’d love me till the end of time;
Forever came to stay in 1989

Still, he was never all so great;
For me that bell had tolled in ‘88

Thirty years go by in the glaze of an eye;
Can it be it’s always the promising future that lies?
 

*******

When my sister Tess and I were girls we’d often visit our father’s grave in New Town Cemetery. Although he had died suddenly when I was two and Tess an infant (thus destined to be little more to us than a face in the family photo album and a grave in the cemetery), we’d make time for “Dear Father” because we had agreed that it was the sort of thing daughters should do. I would recite a psalm memorized from Granna Ivy’s Bible, and Tess would lay a hastily clapped-together bouquet of daisies, buttercups and bluebells on his headstone. I recall admonishing her for the frequent inclusion of dandelions to the arrangement, “Those are weeds, numbskull.” Tess would defend the addition of dandelions on the grounds that “Nobody grows daisies, buttercups or bluebells on purpose, either, bonehead.”

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

No Past, No Future, Just Now by Michelle Ann King

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Front door shut and locked. Push it again, jiggle the handle a few more times, to be sure. I left it open once — maybe more than once?—and next-door’s cat got in the house. Henry wasn’t pleased with me. He’s been so good, so patient, but he was very upset about the door. I’ve been much more careful since.

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All Stories, General Fiction

A Half Century Come and Gone by Tom Sheehan

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 I could picture what it would be like if we met again all these years later. It might go down like this: After 670 miles of a pretty cross country haul, I’d see the meeting-place pub we’d picked sitting brown and ugly like a hovel at the side of the road, a meeting place for the century, out there in some square, hard country setting. And I’d brace myself for comrades, the long stretch between get-togethers, wondering what the hard stuff would do to me this time. Undoubtedly it would leave tracks again.

I closed my eyes, wondering all over again. I hoped Balbo would be in there and Diaz. I hoped Archie’d be in there, red in the face, after his fifth visit, his third wife, his second hospital stay, counting his visits, keeping the tab at his elbow, paying it with no fanfare at all, sometimes embarrassed by his own quick acceptance of it, owing somebody, always owing somebody in this crazy life.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Humour, Romance, Short Fiction, Writing

If… by Hugh Cron – Warning Strong Adult Content

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“Mum, mum, I’m just going to come right out with it…I’m straight.”

“My God!”

Janice crossed herself and burst into tears.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Dead People on Facebook by Roger Ley

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“Seven o’clock, Martin, time to get up,” said Siri from the bedside table.

“Alarm off,” he said.

“Today is Estella’s birthday, would you like to send her a greeting?” asked the cheery voice.

“I’d love to send her a greeting but she died a week ago so it seems a little pointless.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Spam in a Can by David Lohrey

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My pal’s orange Datsun was riddled with bullet holes. The passenger door was a mess. There were between 12 and 21 spaces where the body shop mechanic had had to drill to knock out dents from the impact of an oncoming pickup. Rich could afford the holes but not the patches.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction, Writing

Supply And Demand by Hugh Cron – Strong Adult Content

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“Just keep following this road Donna, it’ll be about another ten minutes.”

Claire stared at her. She could see worry, apprehension and fear. Her younger sister had the same look when she had first told her what she did.

Claire’s thoughts went back to where this had began.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Low Pressure Terracotta by Robert P. Kaye

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The wind stopped blowing on Friday afternoon. Unexpected, since it had never happened before, the problem usually too much wind versus too little. The army of giant turbines stopped rotating in unison. An eerie view from Wayne’s perch in the control tower.

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