All Stories, Fantasy, Short Fiction

A Thing about Spiders by Alex Faulkner

I was surveying the sandy beach laid out before me from a vantage point on the clifftop. I’d been hiking for hours, days on end, along the coastal path. It was late in the century. Herring gulls and fulmars rode the thermals of the summer’s day and I was thinking about the latest spiders.

The creepy beasts have a long and honourable history, beginning in the depths of ancient time. But it was millennia before we were able to unleash their true potential.

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

When the Railroad Comes by Leila Allison

1985

There comes a moment when God stops everything and shines the Big Light on you. You’re presented with a problem that has no solution, and doing nothing isn’t possible. When that first happened to me in 1985, I learned the truth: the closer you get to God, the further you are from your humanity. I have yet to decide if that’s sarcasm, irony, or the wages of being holy. But none of it mattered at that moment. It was up to me to select the least shitty course of action, and I had to choose now.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Humour, Short Fiction

Week 605: Never too Late, Hitler Found Love at 56

I will open with a stupid “duh” remark: Lots of things have changed in writing in the past fifty years. I’ve been at it that long, but the first ten I was a songwriter. That began with dreamy eyed teen minor chord ditties about things I knew nothing about and eventually devolved into writing drunken snatches of genius (i.e. drunk shite, as they say in Scotland) on anything that would take a pen (I hate pencils, they feel like dirt and their smell makes me sneeze). Then, later, when not too shitty they were matched to a number of beats and a chord pattern. I have probably written two hundred songs in my life and not one of them exists on one sheet of paper. Some were recorded on a demo that someone somewhere probably recorded over a long time ago.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Short Fiction

Insert Coin by Ari Derin

There is something about the feel of a coin. It’s that cool heavy feeling. I had a year’s worth of Alcoholics Anonymous coins in my pocket, and I jingled them as I walked down this country road.

The concrete road was cracked and unmarked, and the sky was darkening. A few hundred meters ahead stood what looked like an old-timey photo booth.

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Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 604 – Inhaling Soot,I’ll Walk Next Time And Rob And Kevin.

Before I forget, I’ll answer the riddle that I set on Week 602.

What completes the list?

sore

keel

cosh mark

???

The first three are anagrams of the National Symbols of England (Rose), Wales (Leek), Ireland (Shamrock)

So the fourth has to be:

The list

That is an anagram for Scotland’s (Thistle)

I was being a bit unfair as there was a distinct advantage from this side of the pond!

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

Bangkok, If You’re Listening by Prin Sairungsri

I wake up face-down on cold vinyl tile, my sweaty cheek glued to the gray-specked floor. My mouth tastes like someone juiced a cigarette, poured it into a rotten durian, and forced it all down my throat. For a second, I think I’ve died in a stranger’s apartment. Then I see my crusty Jordan 1’s stuck on the ceiling fan.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Horror, Short Fiction

The Landovers by Frederick K Foote

I’m Lloyd Landover (aka Low), and this is the first day of high school for my twin sister Linda (aka Falling Down Girl) and me.

Our Mom is Lidia Landover, and she works with numbers for the federal government. She’s not a mathematician, statistician, physicist, astronomer, actuary, or accountant.

Mom doesn’t solve math problems. She doesn’t create theories based on math. She plays very intently with every level of math, and somewhere in the results are stuff the government really wants. She calls her work “math doodling.” 

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Amelia in Waiting by Leila Allison

The cataract sky saw not, yet watched; the wind moved not, yet listened; God spoke not, yet instructed. The day simply was and would be until the last mind stopped thinking about it. A low slung blotch of scuzzy radiance, which Amy assumed was the sun, slouched west within the ashes.

Amy gazed out the living room window. Only a double thickness of glass lay between her lungs and the poisons of an imagined alien atmosphere

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All Stories, Editor Picks, Short Fiction

Week 603: Once Upon A Fly Named Elam and the Bittersweet Return of Stream of Consciousness

As I write this, Elam, a weird looking Housefly the color of motor oil, but mostly of a golden sheen, has been tormenting me for the past half hour. Lucky for Elam that I’ve progressed into a philosophy that everything above a bedbug (notice the lack of a capital B there) is holy. Flies just make the cut, above the way they are as infants, yet below your basic Aphid (seems strange I should kill Flies as babies but not as adults–something Herod in that). Elam had no name until he just happened to rest where I left my eyeglasses. Greatly enlarged by one of my lenses, I noticed that one of his many eyes was droopy. It gave him a sinister mein. I do not have much more to say about the vexation called Elam; I do suspect he will still be bothering my screen as I write further, or at least until one of the Cats pinch off something more to his liking, but for those curious about his name, please refer to the clip at the bottom of this post.

This week our friend The Stream of Consciousness (SOC) makes an unasked for return. Now, this time SOC will be edited. No Molly Bloom goingonandonaboutwhatandwho flibberjittishness, nor weirdo spelling will appear after this particular sentence. No, this SOC will involve the current crash and thud of my little life as it unfolds on a dreary September morning that already has a touch of autumn in it. But not the good touch of crimson and gold (well outside the gold sheen of Elam), but the slightly fluey nudge you get when you cannot clear a nascent sore throat or rid yourself of the constant observation of skies of mildew and the certainty another war will break out today even though you are not up to fake caring for such matters because they never involve you. That of course leads to an astonishingly empty self admonishment. What about the new orphans? And then you hear Al Pacino’s voice from And Justice For All… berate you: “Dontcha’ care-yuh, dontcha’ care-yuh?”

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Historical, Short Fiction

One Stone by Robert Walton

Bells and drums – the jingle of a cavalry troop’s harness, the thump of hooves on a dusty road – announced the arrival of riders in gray at a bridge in Georgia in July, 1864.  Most of the soldiers dismounted while their captain rode onto the bridge and halted before two figures, an old black woman holding a sack and a child. 

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