Well here we are at Week 279.
Whenever I see the number seventy nine it makes me think of my first address that I remember as a kid. From there I realise that I can also remember our first phone number.
Firsts are good to bring to the forefront every now and again and I’m sure that many a first has inspired a story. (Or maybe an arrest.)
The end of the world wasn’t so bad. It began with an argument between some self-important people who had a bit too much responsibility. It escalated. The end of the world was loud and hot and bright. Most people dried almost instantly to a pink Himilyan salt, their crystals scattered to the wind. Some took longer, their skin blackened like the crust of a wood fired pizza. Still, some survived, parts of their limbs and flesh melted like a mild gruyere cheese. No, all this was not so bad. It was the lack of good food.
Continue reading “Phillip’s Recipe for Lamb Stew by Max T. Beckman”
You feel it in your soul when the notes swing low and tumble over themselves after a hovering vibrato. The brass sax breathing warm air from wet lips, waiting to create a new feel.
Leila has been passing some of the lock down – locked down. Down in the dark entrails of LS towers. When the noise of her hammering on the doors became too disturbing we let her out and gave her a bite to eat and a little drink. She brought this piece up with her and this is what she said:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Deep End by Sarah Dara”
Leila has chosen a story by one of our hugely talented regulars. Ashlie Allen sends us unusual and intriguing pieces – this is what Leila had to say:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – I Called My Alcoholic Friend Sad Satan by Ashlie Allen”
“Guess who’s sitting in front of me right now?”
My wife Beth was calling from work, from the nursing home where she’s been a hospice nurse and head of an Alzheimer’s ward for a number of years. She is without doubt the most compassionate woman I have ever known. While the dignity of patients come first with her and as much pain-free existence as she can possibly imagine for them, coming towards the end in most cases, she can nevertheless get rocked by hard associations. It is her curse in life, but, of all the women I have met, she is best equipped for this task.
In her mind she kept repeating, ‘It’s something to share, it’s something to share…’
Gina didn’t let the whisper of guilt niggle at her. She’d been thinking on this for a few years but her conscience screamed, not any more.
Continue reading “Gina And Gary by Hugh Cron – Warning Adult Content.”
There’s no town today where Indian Hollow, Illinois, used to be. You could start at Cairo and head six or seven miles north to Mound City and never find a trace of Indian Hollow along the way. But if someone told you there used to be a town in between Cairo and Mound City that’s not there anymore, you could maybe figure out what had happened to it because for the whole six or seven miles you’d see the Ohio River on your right. You might guess that flooding had made the town disappear even if you’d never heard of the Ohio River flood of 1937. The flood of 1937 killed four hundred people and left a million homeless. It put Mound City under twelve feet of water.
Lost and found.
That’s where Kathleen would go if this had happened at a big box store, her carelessness broadcast over the loudspeaker. Instead, she lost something precious in the snow, in deep, cold, silent snow. Beautiful, but impossible to search — unlike the hard floors and ordered aisles of housewares and sports equipment, toiletries and toys.
Emma was pissed off. She hadn’t seen him since he got out of jail after doing a weekender. He’d been huckled for theft and fighting with the security guard who caught him. She knew Sean’s logic only too well. Getting done for the theft was fair enough but the fighting was the guards fault for catching him.
Continue reading “Daddy’s Girl by Hugh Cron – Warning Adult Content.”
