Eighty-nine-years-old and he hasn’t a clue. About fucking any of it.
*
“I’m sorry, my love. I’m so sorry.”
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Category: General Fiction
The Vet by Tom Sheehan
The first man in this story, Carl Savage, stood at the end of the ward in a veterans’ hospital in Central Massachusetts: the second man, bed-ridden, stared at him, fighting for a splash of recognition. There was the way that man shrugged his shoulders, looked back over one as if he had missed a targeting mark. The second man moved in his bed; a slight movement barely noticeable. He had not moved much in almost twenty years. He wanted to call out, but he knew no name; but knew something; it spun up out of him as if it were the last chance in the whole world. The man at the end of the hall halted his departure and turned around slowly in his departure. The second man in the bed began to move one finger. One finger! One finger as if tapping on a key, tapping, tapping, tapping.
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Smile, You’re a Beaver by Jeremy Johnson
Oh! To be born again like this! Sweet Beaver!
It’s a crispy, young morning in the infancy of spring and there is still frost to be found in the hollows and places that are shaded all day. As the sun emerges in yellow shards of a nearby eastern mountain, so too do you emerge from your cozy beaver home. Yawning out at the sky, your big beaver teeth glisten.
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Standing in the Rain to Wash the Sins Away by Tom Sheehan
He stood in the rain to wash his sins away thinking it would do the trick, cleanse his soul, invigorate him once more, to be what he once was. That’s our hero, Viking Arel Tor, neighborhood leader, pointer of straight or straighter paths, finder of fame, good luck, saving for you the best lady of all in your welcome arms, for now and always. Viking’s way in the world.
But where did he go wrong, our Viking?
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In the Eye by Chrissie Rohrman
From the backseat, Callie yowls and scratches her claws against the front grate of her carrier. It’s a miracle I even got her in the thing—she hates being cooped up. They say pets take on characteristics of their owners.
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The Cartoon by Cy Hill
It would be a lark to sit before a cartoonist at Seattle’s Pike Place Market, a joke because last night two of her oil paintings were hung in an art exhibition hall side by side with a pair of her husband’s oils. Would not a cartoon of her be the perfect ironic token to give him to commemorate their recognition? One local art critic dubbed them the “Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera” of Orange County, California. Granted, her husband had cultivated him and planted the phrase, but now it was out there.
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Black and White Christmas by T.L. Tomljanovic
Isla liked to play a little game while driving on Highway 4 to Grandma and Grandpa’s for Christmas. She zigzagged her eyes between telephone poles and farm fence posts until her head hurt. The car window was an endless stream of canola fields blanketed with snow and open skies.
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The Thursday Night Woman by Tom Sheehan – Adult Content.
It was all hers, the night, the huge house, the loneliness, the dark corners of every room that she knew so well. It was all hers, and Thursday was special, just about every Thursday except the ones precluded by her natural flow. First, there’d be a soak in the tub, for an hour or so, after which she’d stand in front of the 7-foot mirror and study herself, always noting the dark mass of pubic hair, curled and rolled and headlining her view. There was a connection with that action, left by her husband, Kent.
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Here Come Grandfather’s Goats by Antony Osgood
Ahmed falls from the steel deck thick with diesel oil and malice, through a rain unlike anything he’s known, and he glimpses an almost touchable shore, shameless, sharp and cruel, unreal and foreign, rich with waste and electricity, though the air’s not a thing to loiter in.
I’m flying to a distant destination.
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What’s in My Wallet? By Tom Sheehan
For these past 70 years, since 1951 in Korea, I have carried a 1000 Won Korean Banknote in my wallet with the signatures of all my squad members on the face of that banknote, our unit being Headquarters section, First Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment of the 7th Infantry Division, when we were deployed on the far side of Lake Hwachon, and when squad members put their signatures on that bank note, given to me by a Korean worker assigned to our unit, Lee Bong Ha. He was a chief figurehead in his own right when he made a replacement crystal for a comrade’s broken watch crystal out of a plastic spoon, which was carried in many military papers under the title of “Time to Spoon.” Lee Bong Ha had been paid off from his government contract with a basketful of such banknotes, and passed them out like the near-useless paper that they were (some of them used for the most unlikely reasons you might think of.)
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literally stories 