The App description said that the Umbrella Man’s “got what you need.” Brian Fuld downloaded the App and launched it while relaxing in bed and settling in for the night.
Brian scrolled through the typical legal jargon and tapped the “I accept” button. The grey silhouette of a man holding an umbrella appeared on the screen. Brian touched the image and the words “I have what you need” appeared. Nothing else happened. $1.99 down the drain. Brian put his phone down and gave in to sleep.
The clouds were moving. If Harvey closed one eye, he could see them as they drifted above him. He didn’t know when dental offices began putting relaxing pictures in their light fixtures, but he was damned grateful for it. It could have been the numbing stuff they jammed into his gums or that he had been in this chair for an hour and was starting to hallucinate, but those clouds were definitely moving.
“It was a hay loft, sweetheart,” her mother said. “The old lady who used to live here kept hay up there to feed her cows.”
“But it’s empty now,” the child said. “And I hear things.”
“It used to be a hay loft,” her mother said patiently, “so there were lots of small animals lived in it.” She smiled encouragingly. “Dormice, you know, like in Alice in Wonderland.”
I bought a Dracula painting at the Thrift store yesterday. The clerk looked at me with contemptuous eyes as she scanned the price ticket. I thought I heard her whisper “That gothic child just wasted his money” as I walked towards the door.
Eastern B.C.; nestled in the heart of the thick-treed Kootenays; a small, mountain town; winters cause hands to callous, to bleed.
Twenty minutes from town there is a small log home. A child and a lycanthrope live there. She is small, ashen, could disappear into the snow if it weren’t for her dark hair. They once lived with a woman, too. The woman didn’t know what the little girl knows, that the man they lived with turned into something uglier and beastlier when the white moon grew fat.
The garden has faces. No one has seen them except me. At night, after serving my boss and his family dinner, I sneak outside to see the Dracula orchids, the Coxcombs and Proteas. “My friends!” I bow to them. “Forgive me. Everyone is in a bad mood. I too am in negative spirits.” The Dracula callas started speaking recently. One night they told me I looked like a corpse who wept himself to death.” I went to my assigned room, looked in the mirror and watched my tears turn yellow in the lamplight.
Continue reading “Facing a Garden Full of Faces by Ashlie Allen”
The suspect scanned the interrogation room through a pair of thick-lensed, gold-wire aviator glasses. His wrists were cuffed, chained to a handle on a metal table. A detective sat opposite him. He wanted to know about the head in the refrigerator.
*************************************************************************************
He looked out into the grounds and couldn’t understand the blackness. He thought that it was dead leaves. There had been a storm throughout the night which had unsettled. The dreams had frightened. He became anxious again as he tried to recall. They teased him, they were there hovering near to the edge of his consciousness, without form…disturbing. The Priest gave up and went into his bathroom to shave. The tremor in his hand changed his mind. He rinsed his face and tried to pray, the familiar words, spoken every morning since he entered the Diocese sixty years back were alien to him. They choked him and he felt a tear run down his cheek. It occurred to the old man that maybe he was having a stroke.
I.
“Dear Lord Jesus – please take care of my mom. Please welcome my papa into heaven, Lord. He was a good man and you’ll see that when you talk to him. Everyone knows it. My mom’s good, too, so please watch over her. She says she doesn’t believe in you – but I do – and I know that she does in her heart. She knows how much you love all of your children and I don’t want to die. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t.”
The fight starts in the kitchen between a couple of chefs, which means it could be about any number of things (drugs, booze, girls, hours, pay), but because Terry and Sean are a pair of obnoxious, stupid assholes, it’s about some soup. Terry thinks the bisque could use some paprika, but Sean fucking hates paprika.
That’s it. That’s all it takes to set them off.
literally stories 