Category: General Fiction

All Stories, General Fiction

One Hundred Percent Sure by Daniel Shiffman

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Every evening before her bath and bed, Caroline and I cover the half-mile loop of our street lined with towering Loblolly pines and small, neat single-story brick houses. Caroline rides her tiny bike a few yards ahead of me, alternating between steadying taps of her sneakers on the gummy pavement and wobbly pedaling as her sundress flutters over the mosquito bites on her shins and ankles. A few mosquitoes hover around Caroline’s brown curls.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 494: Mendacity; Come Home Rutherford B. Hayes; Cool Stories to Beat the Heat; Health Tonics

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Mendacity and RBH

Ostriches do not stick their heads in the sand to avoid the Awful Truth. That mendacity has been around since Roman times and should be purged from the metaphor store. Only people behave that way, and when an animal does the same, you can rest assured that she/he is only mocking you.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Old Guitarist by Dale W Barrigar

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I saw a little man riding a child’s bicycle in Berwyn, Illinois, outside Chicago, on the sidewalk, along Roosevelt Road. He was carrying a guitar; this was the first thing that caught my attention. The guitar was strapped over his back. But it was also slung down partly across the side of his body so he could cuddle it with one arm while he steered the bike with the other and pedaled the small pedals with his small legs.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Birds by Sarah Macallister

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We all worried. Ever since he came back from Glasgow, Uncle Neil seemed different, jauntier. And it wasn’t just the new hat. He strutted around the village, singing in an uneven baritone. Whistling. To be honest, we thought he’d bagged someone and felt sorry for Auntie Sandy. But it wasn’t that.

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All Stories, General Fiction

A Nice Day by Gene Bray

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Red Hook Brooklyn 10am. I wake up and look out my 11th floor window.

 Oh my God. The sky.  I’m blasted. I’m overwhelmed. By blue. But not just any blue. Royal Blue. Stunning Royal Blue from horizon to horizon. It’s usually a dirty, featureless gray  

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All Stories, General Fiction

What’s Left by Todd Dodson

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He settled the last of the old Amazon boxes in the bed of the pickup, an intractable, unstrung guitar neck poking out from the middle, with the faded moon looming eerie in the midday sky like the cover of some science fiction paperback. He threw a blue tarp over the mess, then took his time stitching a length of twine through the grommets, around the cleats, a clever hitch knot at the end, even opening the driver’s side door before finally, finally turning to me standing in the hot pea gravel, glass of ice tea melting in my hand, before saying, “Well, that’s it.”      

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Yellowing Yellow Room by Colby Loucks

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I am sitting in a windowless room in Africa’s Congo Basin wishing I had taken French instead of Latin in high school. My mom forced me to take Latin, saying it would help me become a doctor. What a load of crap! Or as they say in Latin “Quid onus crap!” Also, I am not a doctor but a middling middle-aged ecologist who is at this very moment sweating through my t-shirt, sharing a room not much bigger than gas station bathroom with one Congolese priest and one Spanish priest. They are not praying but discussing bribery. I know this because I did end up taking four semesters of Spanish in college, and heard the Spanish priest say “Quanto dinero?” The Congolese priest whispered back to him in French with something that sounded like “Quanto dinero?” But it is definitely French. I know this because his earnest whispers are as soft as crushed velvet, the syllables gently rolling over each other. No other language but French does this.

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All Stories, General Fiction

AI Husband by Claire Massey

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Madeline tells her virtual assistant to play the invitation again. Did she really hear the antiquated phrase, in-person? Pandora says, “repeating anniversary party details from George and Lydia” and yep, there’s cousin George’s avatar, declaring he’s 40 years married in 2040 (!) and guests can attend the celebration by holographic teleportation or in-person.

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