Well hello there China’s!! (See Rikki Fulton – I’ve mentioned him before)
Here we are at Week 538 – These posts are fair drawin’ in. As it is after the 21st of June, which was the Summer Solstice here, that means that the days are getting shorter which really has fuck all to do with the post!! I just like the phrase!!
Continue reading “Week 538 – He Was Brilliant In ‘On Frozen Ground’, I Thank The Trooper Of The Plague And Ah Need Some Time. (Mibbee)”
In her nursing home bed, petite Margaret, just four feet tall, stared at the ceiling under the dim glow of fluorescent lights, her face devoid of the vibrancy it once held. Legs that had leapt across a sound stage lay thin and mottled with brown age spots. Feet that had slid into dainty slippers now stood as small, rigid reminders of long ago.
Continue reading “Tiny Dancers by P A Farrell”
Looking out over the bridge, you can see widows in their sarees and gold bangles and solemn, painted faces. Above them, the sun emits a last, romantic orange which blends with the blue of the previous sky, creating stripes of pink which bring the two colors together. The air smells of death.
Continue reading “Please, Varanasi by Arjun Shah”
Gerald Coleman has created a fantastic fictional character named “Billy Olsen.” But like all fantastic fictional characters, Billy is as real as anyone living because of the experience, observation and talent laid into him by his creator. Out of His League is both the first appearance by Gerry and Billy and we think that readers who missed it the first time around should catch a break and gain a second opportunity.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Gerald Coleman”
Despite an amount of booster shots I can no longer recall (five, I think), I again came down with covid (thrice so far that I know of), a week ago Wednesday. This is by far the strongest one I have endured, and even though it has ruled the last week and a half, it certainly is not a killer. It spared me the last three days of my work career and has gotten retirement off to a somewhat foggy start.
Continue reading “Week 538: The Mind of the STM”
One day, I meet Beelzebub standing ahead of me in line at the To God Be the Glory Soup Kitchen. Bathed in the glare of the fluorescent lights that flicker above us, the man glistens. Shards of hard white light reflect off his glimmering jacket, obscuring my view.
But that one glimpse gives me the shivers.
Continue reading “Slow Walking Out of Babylon by Deborah Prum”
Keith LaFountaine has appeared on the site a few times, but not enough. His work is sincere and thoughtful such as this fine example, Home Again. This work is multilayered and even contains a language of Keith’s (I assume) own invention. It is a masterful blend of science fiction, horror, regret and even redemption. Such a wonderful mix that is quite poignant and inspiring. We believe that readers new to it will come away feeling the same.
We have invited Keith to add his own thoughts on Home Again.
***
Now Over to Keith:
I tend to get story inspirations from imagery, and for this story the image was the opening paragraph: an astronaut in a spaceship, surrounded by his dead crew members and bubbles of blood as he cascades toward an alien planet. I didn’t know what awaited him on that planet or what would happen when he landed, and I spent a lot of time thinking about that question before landing on the final scene (I also happened to be reading Stephen King’s “Revival” at the time, which likely contributed). But mostly, I was interested in David’s life. What led him to that point? How did he end up in that spaceship? And what is he thinking about as he stares down his mortality? Whether David actually transcends time and Space, or whether it’s simply revery, I’ll leave that to readers to decide. For me, what’s important is David’s decision to turn that car around.
Long ago, in the American midwest, a woman shot her husband of twenty some odd (and some even) years to death because he would not turn down the “goddam” TV.
There are three cliches we should examine to come to an objective opinion about this situation.
Continue reading “Week 537: Making A.I. Cry”
It started on Facebook, a notice from a neighborhood dog fanciers’ page about somebody dousing a piece of steak with anti-freeze and tossing it over a fence to an unsuspecting dog, which ate the meat and died. (Apparently these attacks have been happening for quite a while now, and they believe it is the same man.) Then it was taken up by the neighborhood listserv, the modern-day call-tree, and further warnings about this criminal – described as a bald white man in his sixties – prompted an outpouring of fear and outrage. (He appears to be targeting pitbull breeds in the Lakeview area of Potawatomi Rapids.) A vigilante call went out; posters went up on phone polls; you heard nervous chatter in the grocery. You could practically hear the bugle summoning us to action. (Let’s work together and catch this guy so no more of our neighborhood pets have to suffer from his horrible acts. PLEASE SHARE & SPREAD THE WORD!!!)
Continue reading “Bald White Man in His Sixties by J C Rammelkamp”
“No one’s going to be looking,” he snapped.
He heard her sigh but didn’t turn to look. After a moment, the sound of her struggling up the embankment and the crashing of undergrowth came to him as she made her way into the bushes that covered the upper slopes.
Continue reading “Breakdown by Matthew Roy Davey”
literally stories 