“We all remember what this house was like just three long days ago, dim, dum and dire. A space that forced the family apart instead of wrapping it in a comfortingly casual caress. Let’s take a peek at what miracles our team have managed to accomplish. Come on in.
Continue reading “Revamp by Peter O’Connor”
As we get closer to Halloween I find myself thinking of the darker side of the human heart. But instead of making a list of horror films and actors (which I have done before), I would like to salute the Evil Bad Guys* of Film and TV, for they are the ones who make stuff worth watching. (I use the word “Guys” in the unisex form–for I do not care for “Gals.”)
Continue reading “Week 399: A Tribute to Dark and Stormy Knights and Another Week That Is”
-Prologue-
Ineffable Is As Ineffable Does
With a peaked roof topped by a small brass eagle, the “Caretaker’s Cottage” in New Town Cemetery is a seven-by-nine rectangle that stands long side up. A few years back the City of Charleston had money left over in the Parks Department budget; two thousand dollars was allotted for the creation of ten incomprehensibly cheap signs to mark various “historical sites” throughout town. It was one of those mystifying expenditures that governments make to discourage the expectation of competence. One of the signs stands in front of the rectangle. It says: “Former Caretaker’s Cottage.”
Outside being the ancestral home to untold generations of Grey Squirrels, the building is a tool shed added decades after the cemetery was founded in 1902. New Town did have a live-in caretaker once, but he dwelled in a long since razed house that stood at the foot of the hill in which the cemetery is seated. But the extremely typical Charleston city employee tasked with the sign job had to put something on the one set aside for the cemetery–so she pulled a fiction from where the sun never rises and literally engaged a sign maker (her fiance–who reaped a thousand percent profit). In fact, nine of the ten signs placed throughout Charleston are similarly procured fictions–with the other being only true about Hartsville, Tennessee–the boyfriend sign maker’s hometown.
Continue reading “The Caretaker’s Cottage by Leila Allison”
“You’re coming on fine Malcolm.”
“Malky, I want to be called Malky”
“Malky?”
“Aye”
“Aye?”
“Aye? Are you just repeating whit Ah’m saying or are you just being a fud in general?”
Continue reading “A Typical Scottish AI Story by Hugh Cron – Warning – Adult Content.”
Clutching my holdall, I slipped into the chantry of an early fifteenth-century chapel. It was late at night, and the only light in the chapel was provided by half a dozen flickering candles that created disturbing shadows on the walls. I was interested in the tomb of a medieval knight and his lady and although I had never felt comfortable in the presence of death, even in the daylight hours, if I had come during the day, I would have been spotted by the sacristan and asked to leave.
Continue reading “The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place by Tony Dawson”
Beelzebub and one of his friends created The Devil’s Brew or as he called it, ‘Ma Beer.’
Folks don’t realise that Auld Lucifer is a bit possessive and likes to take credit.
He’d been bored and decided to make some Homebrew syrup to corrupt. The thought that people would have to take time, brew it, leave it for less time than instructed, add more sugar and yeast to form as much alcohol as possible and then drink the corruption made him well happy.
Continue reading “The Legend Of The Devil’s Brew by Hugh Cron – Warning – Adult Content.”
“This is it, Mitch, the crunch match we’ve all been waiting for.”
“That’s right, Bud, a fight we never thought would happen, or even should. But here we are. Weird.”
Continue reading “The Big Infight by Tim Frank”
Fat Freddy hated laundry. He hated the insolent way the grotesque pile grew. He hated the smug swish-swash sound of the washing machine, and the self-satisfying whirr of its spin cycle. And after all that, he especially hated the selfishness of the dryer keeping all that warmth for itself and the undeserving clothes. One day, he thought, it’s all going to come to a boil.
Continue reading “Laundry Night by John D. Connelley”
Betty sat on a 2B pencil as if on a bench, her high heels hooked against a dip nib pen that lay at the base of an inkwell. Elbows on her knees and chin cupped in her palms she stared at a black smudge smeared across an eight-and-a-half by eleven sheet of white paper tacked to a drafting board. She followed its diagonal downward path onto the desktop until it ended at her feet.
Continue reading “Escaping the Good Old Days by Mark Russo”
You know, sometimes people die because of inattention. That’s what happened to Zelda May Crawford, the community activist. Zelda was down on 7th and Broadway just a yakking away on her cell. Poor Baby stepped in front of the number 10 crosstown express bus. Splat! And that was that.
Continue reading “Dead Certain by Frederick K Foote”
literally stories 