Category: General Fiction

All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

A Starless Street Corner by Christopher J Ananias.

literallystories2014

I took long walks into the insomniac’s night. Wild music thumped on the deserted sidewalk. I peered into the smeary barroom window. A man in coveralls slept with his head on his arms at a table. Pool balls cracked next to his ear. Angry hairy faces, full of booze were engaged in the battle of the green felt, and blood may spill. I walked onward before I drew some menace from the watering hole. Then I met the traveler on a starless street corner.

Continue reading “A Starless Street Corner by Christopher J Ananias.” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Breathing Underwater by Katrina Irene Gould

literallystories2014

On Saturday, Mark ate breakfast with me before heading to work, even lingering in deference to the weekend. A month earlier, I’d fled our apartment for two nights to call attention to my despair, but exactly nothing had changed. I wondered if our small life could be enough.

Continue reading “Breathing Underwater by Katrina Irene Gould” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Hands, Eyes, Feet by Annabel Moir Smith

literallystories2014

Frederic was learning how to live in the nothing. The world was tactile, it was the thudding of bare feet on hardwood floors and the sprinkle of misty rain on skin, and it was olfactory, chicken cooking on the stove, peonies, paint thinner. The sounds of his parents murmuring at night and his own name in the news on TV were muffled and far away. There was pain still in his eyes and head, pain that ebbed and flowed, but in his pain-free moments Frederic was the happiest he had been in years.

Continue reading “Hands, Eyes, Feet by Annabel Moir Smith” →
All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 480: Tabby Rasa and Cat Commandements

ireneallison12

Tabula rasa, the blank slate, has taken a new meaning in the courtyard. One recent morning I left for work and saw a Red Cat of maybe four months in a window. Almost indigestibly cute, he was a war with the window shade and was, judging by the bent to hell slats, winning a decisive battle.

Continue reading “Week 480: Tabby Rasa and Cat Commandements” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Quality Photos by Steven McBrearty

literallystories2014

The summer of our wedding my bride Claudia VanderMeer and I leased a split-level duplex on a dead-end street in a close-in gentrifying area of south central Austin, a quiet, in-transition neighborhood of young families and senior citizens and dogs.  The opposite side of the duplex was occupied by the owner/landlord, a white-haired University of Texas professor who we figured was gay.  We were fine with him being gay (perhaps we even wanted him to be gay), both for philosophical reasons and as a counterpoint to our conspicuously heterosexual, pre-children, pre-jaded bliss.  

Continue reading “Quality Photos by Steven McBrearty” →
All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Pulse by Gregory Golley

literallystories2014

Before data can be captured, it must be desired
Steve F. Anderson

He came out of the tunnel and there she was, perched at one of the patio tables of the Greenleaf Café. Even from that distance her long, jointed legs and oversized sunglasses recalled the grasshopper he’d met that very morning on the bike path.

Continue reading “Pulse by Gregory Golley” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Looker by JJ Graham

literallystories2014

He says I look bad on me.

He says it’s not my fault that no one does us any kindnesses since I’ve never done a kindness for someone else, so how should I know how to receive one.

On a computer at the library, he shows me YouTubes of homeless people getting their hair cut.

“It’s not that hard,” he says.

Neither of us needs a haircut, but he says that’s not the point. The point is that it takes commitment.

Continue reading “Looker by JJ Graham” →
All Stories, General Fiction

My Mom Died Yesterday by Zora Foote

literallystories2014

My mom died yesterday. No bull, well maybe a tiny bull, by the time you read this it may have been last week, last month, or last year, but I’m pretty sure she will still be dead. I am not astonished. I am not mollified. I am not even a tad bit sad. By contrast, my German Shepherd died four months ago, and I had to be medicated. Our relationship was not a good one, the one with my mom, not the dog. I loved my dog.

Continue reading “My Mom Died Yesterday by Zora Foote” →
General Fiction, Short Fiction

Behind this Stone by Tom Sheehan

literallystories2014

I’ve always listened to humming here in this old house of mine, thinking so many times from my early years that it was the universe humming, or the humming of the gods coming to sensitive me, especially in that period around my 12th year when my imagination ran wild.

Continue reading “Behind this Stone by Tom Sheehan” →