Category: General Fiction

All Stories, General Fiction

“Don’t Worry, We Got You” by Adam Kluger

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Billy Marston felt like a toy slinky walking down the stairs. Gaining momentum on his way to an inevitable crash.

Billy was a spectacle.

His family and friends worried about him. He was so close yet so far. Smart but stupid. Funny but not haha funny. He didn’t know how to do the simplest things and he felt that history would not be kind.

His family would call him a kind soul without the stomach for success. A loser. His friends would recall humorous tales. But Billy had lost his way. He knew what he was doing when he did it but didn’t know what to do with himself when he wasn’t.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Gravity Hill by Rob O’Keefe

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There were worse places to be a teenager than New Jersey.

Teenagers, like vampires, are creatures of the night, sharing the same pallor, inward focus, and questionable fashion sense. Unlike the vampires of old, who lived their undead nights under dark, occasionally moonlit skies, your average New Jersey 18-year-old reveled in the neon glow of streetlights and store fronts. Both, however, had to be true to their natures, which meant constantly being on the prowl to quench an insatiable thirst.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Historical

The Lady’s Photo by Tom Sheehan

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The last thing Burt Shantell said to me was, “I’m not going to make it, Tom, but take this photo of my wife, Myrna, and tell her the last words I said were about her, and she’s in Stockard, Montana.”

I tried to quiet him; “Take it easy, Burt, you’ll be okay. The Medics are in the next bunker,” which was a lie, of course, a soft sponge of a lie.

Because I was talking to a dead man, a dead comrade, in Korea in 1951. The next thing was seeing him in a body rack as we moved along the trail on the other side of Lake Hwachon, already having seen a pal from my hometown, and another high school opponent from Lynn, Massachusetts, the town abutting one side of my home town, Saugus.

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All Stories, General Fiction

 A Casual Abuser by Frederick K Foote

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My name is Hakeem Alford, and I made the Dean’s List at San Juan Junior College (SJJC). I wasn’t trying to make the Dean’s list. I was surprised to find out that the dean even had a list. I’m not a straight “A” student. Most of the time, I’m a student, you don’t expect to get an ‘A.’

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All Stories, General Fiction

My Friend Greg by Elizabeth Day Broschart

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I met my oldest friend Greg for coffee when the allegations were at their height. We did not speak of them at first. I inquired on his health, which led to an inquiry on his family, which led back to the allegations. “She’s shut me out,” Greg said, meaning his wife, who had moved from their Manhattan apartment to their daughter’s place in Brooklyn. “Not a word in weeks.” Greg sipped his coffee and his eyes moved shiftily from side to side as if gaging whether anyone from the coffee shop was listening in. “But you believe me, right?”

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

Maintenance by Bryce Johle 

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Nelson was watching the fan wobbling from the dining room ceiling when he heard a gunshot somewhere in the distance. From the couch, the blades swayed and rattled unlike their original behavior upon moving in. Something he’d have to fix himself, no doubt.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Sidelined by Antony Osgood

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My girlfriend has the habit of tapping my hand with her bare ring finger; in libraries, in crowded bars, as we walk through galleries, in bed when she discusses my performance, at restaurants where she asks after my unsophisticated palate, whenever she wishes to emphasise her point, she raps a morse code bruise. In another year, I will be identifiable only through the stigmata she causes. I have said this when out with friends, only for her to tap my palm and tell me I’m not that funny. Each tap implies I am shallow, that I need to listen more, or perhaps simply that I’m lucky she has any time for me at all. Her friend Greta once took me aside to say she thought I was a little more than a mere project, (‘A doer-upper you are not,’ is what she mumbled drunkenly), and that I might do worse than speaking up for myself. Greta said even love might feel like a steamroller somedays.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Embracing Your Evil Twin by Marco Etheridge

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Up until quite recently, you were a very sick man. The Big C, of course. Leukemia, a nasty version. Picture the scene, sitting across the desk from your oncologist. You hear the word cancer, then the hunky doctor lays out the projected timeline of your now limited existence on this earth. The oncologist speaks with precision, each phrase an expression of practiced compassion. He’s done this before. You haven’t. All you hear is blah-blah-blah. That’s how it was for you.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Jack o’ Diamonds by Michael Bloor

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Most British towns and villages are ancient foundations with Roman remains, ruined castles, and the like. Not so Daleforge. Before the 1840s, there was just the forge and the smith’s cottage. Butthen, in quick order, came the pit, the rows and rows of workers’ cottages, the ironworks, and the railway. With the houses, came the football. Not at first the codifed game of eleven versus eleven,but the rough-and-tumble, no-holds-barred, pitched battle held every Shrovetide between those in the houses on one side of the Red Brook versus those on the other. But soon enough after the English Football Association was formed in the 1860s, Daleforge United FC emerged and eventually became a founder member of the Football League. And that was what my dirty old town became famous for: the foundries and the football.

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