Category: General Fiction

All Stories, General Fiction

War Games by Alan Rice

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Sammy was often mistaken for being younger than he actually was. He was short for his age, and skinny, and wore black-rimmed glasses and white shirts buttoned up to the very top. He had a high, broad forehead and his face narrowed down to a pointed chin; his big, dark eyes were set very far apart, halfway between the brow line and his chin, and his mouth often appeared little more than a dot beneath a small, sharp nose. His hair was black, long, and unstyled; it just hung from his crown like a toupee that had been put on wrong. With a pair of pointy ears, he would have made the perfect cartoon space alien.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Jesu-Vape by Robin Dennis

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Reader Alert – Please refer to tabs

So I’m yankin’ this thing out the drainpipe, getting’ blood up me cuffs, while those little twats are creasin’ up in the car park. They’ve proper mashed it up, n’all: it’s comin’ out in handfuls; I can feel its guts through me rubber gloves.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 510: Snow Daze Enthusiasm; Everyday Enthusiasms; More From the Pantry and a Long Distance Dedication From David McCallum

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(Meet Boo, picture provided by Tressa Bella Barrigar)

Snow Daze

The fine fellow in this image is Boo the Husky Artist as a Young Dog–who to this very instant remains a close associate and housemate of our friend, Dale Williams Barrigar. I think Boo exemplifies the Spirit of Snow Day as well as any living creature. Huskies can handle the chill. They will smile and play and chat gleefully at the Antarctic, and raise a quizzical brow as your blood freezes faster than the face of a strip club bouncer when you get all hands with his girl. (For what I hope are obvious reasons, I have never been inside a strip club, but my brother saw a guy get jacked-up something awful for engaging in the described stupid activity: “Dude gotta face full of fist…lost some teeth.”)

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction

Personal Growth by Ben Fitton

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The hole was definitely growing. 

Jonty could tell, having just woken from a nap, face tingling with grass imprints and a half-crushed flailing ladybird stuck on his eyelashes, to find the hole bigger and nearer.

Jonty was seen as a shabby, acceptable kind of aristo who loitered in gardens on dewy mornings, drunk or whimsical, misquoting Homer and asking for a crustless sandwich while he sat, as squat as a stone rounded by a forgiving sea, marvelling at the stains on his tie. 

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All Stories, General Fiction

Ghost by Margaret Wells

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Text 9:40 pm “It’s not the same without you [shrug emoji].”

Text 9:41 pm, Spotify link, “Tu Orgullo” [Your pride]

Text 9:42 pm, Spotify link, “Estoy Aquí” [I’m here]

Part of me wanted to type, are you fucking kidding me, after four years, still with this bullshit? What part of “we’re divorced” is not resonating with you? The other half of me knew that there was no possible way to reply. Every reply would be the wrong reply. To respond to the substance—really, my pride was the problem, you cheating bastard?—would be to invite more back and forth. (That our split was all about my pride was one of his constant refrains.) To remind him that I’d asked him to stop sending texts like these would bring the rejoinder that he knew that already, but couldn’t I see his true and beautiful love, a true and beautiful love that existed in and around the totally incidental cheating that went on sporadically ever since we got together when we were twenty-two? Couldn’t I see that he had given me every reason over decades to fight for him and for our relationship? What was wrong with me?

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All Stories, General Fiction

Ghost of a Shark by Neil James

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The monster on the beach lies on his side – bigger than a boat, sadder than the ocean. The seafront’s deserted at dawn, so I leave my bike in the empty car park, next to the tariff sign that upsets the tourists. My shoes imprint into the wet sand as I approach him, the creature from another world. 

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All Stories, General Fiction

 Mushawie off the Hill by Tom Sheehan

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Jimmy Mac, on the second-floor porch of his Smith Road house and the early sun barely creasing the edge of Baker Hill, looked over the top of the box scores, the Sox winning their fifth in a row, and saw, for the first time in he’d later guess to be about eight years, Mushawie just coming to the bottom of the Cinder Path. Coming off Baker Hill. He couldn’t remember Mushawie being off the hill. My God! Jimmy, said to himself. Nobody saw Mushawie unless he wanted them to see him, him socked away back in on the Delmere property the way he’d been since VJ Day in ’45.


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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 508:Inspiring Words From the Past; New Inspiring Words and Remembering a Friend

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Inside Information Inspiration

At the start of his career Hunter S. Thompson typed copies of famous novels in effort to gain a “muscle memory” of greatness–Gatsby for instance; the whole thing, seeking the inspiration; how it felt to write the powerful words. I have never gone that far, but I do surround myself with what I think are great words and images. These are pasted to my walls along with what I consider fine art. Visually, I have (among many others) Van Gough, Picasso, Dali and Giger prints as well as a large Shakespeare poster (whose accusatory eyes tend to follow me for some reason) on my walls. But it is not all highbrow, because I also have stuff like Elliott the Pigeon (of this wrap’s header), “Dogs Playing Poker” and a poster for Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster on the same walls

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All Stories, General Fiction

In Want of a Home by Alannah Tjhatra

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Angel was sprawled across the couch, the TV turned to Seinfeld. She had a cigarette in one hand and a magazine in the other.

“Wish you’d at least take that shit outside.” Grace stripped off her soaking coat, peeled a dead worm off the sole of her shoe. She stuck her sneakers on the heater to dry.

Angel rolled her eyes, a puff of smoke escaping her lips. “And hello to you too, baby.”

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