General Fiction, Short Fiction

This is My Rifle, This is My Gun by Shannon Greenstein

“Sir?”

The Artist jumped, whirling away from the attic window out of which he had been staring.

“Stay there,” he barked, and the figure he had been sketching immediately froze, Lot’s wife on the heels of her one bad decision.

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Short Fiction, sunday whatever

Weight Gain by Hugh Cron

“I take it you eat most of your food at home, gorging, where no-one can see?”
“I suppose so, at home that is but never gorging.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“What’s your favourite? Kebabs? Chips and Cheese? Sweet And Sour? Trifle? All of the above?”

“…Probably fish.”
“Oh, I do like a fish supper but you know, my waste-line doesn’t look after itself! So is it chips and curry
sauce and a battered fish for you?”
“No. I like a Salmon Caesar Salad with a touch of lemon mayonnaise. Or a Sea-bass on a bed of
courgette, tomatoes, asparagus and mange-tout.”
“Really! Well fuck me! Puddings though, I take it you like your puddings? All of them/ Isthere any that
you prefer?”
“Yep, I love fresh fruit.”
“Well it’s getting a bit clearer now, you never see a skinny gorilla! I suppose it’s a good job that they don’t
like ice-cream…What’s your favourite flavour? I bet it’s chocolate”
“Ice cream goes right through me so I avoid it.”
“…But you are really fat, so maybe some of it sticks.”
“My weight is an enigma to me. I am the only person that I know who can defecate, stand on the scales
and be two pounds heavier…How that makes me laugh.”
“What about sweeties, you must eat loads or is it tonnes?”
“Nope, I prefer plain crackers.”
“With what?”
“Nothing really, just a glass of red wine.”
“A glass or a case?”
“…Just a glass, enough for my crackers.”
“Hee-Hee same sort of question, just the packet or a case?”
“A few does me.”
“So you’re telling me that you eat the way that you do and yet you are still fucking enormous??”
“I suppose I am.”
“I don’t believe you. You must be shovelling in a dozen or so doughnuts. Maybe you are one of those
weird fucks who sleep eat, walk, eat and walk…Does your food go missing? And does the staff of your
local twenty-four hour Spar look at you in a funny way?”

“No.”
“Exercise! I take it you are a lazy bastard and do fuck all?”
“I walk to my work so I do around twenty miles a week.”
“Twenty?”
“Around that and that isn’t counting me being on my feet all day.”
“You can’t be watching what you eat. I know fucking everything that goes into my mouth.”
“I don’t watch what I eat as I know that it doesn’t matter”
“I take it that you’re happy to be a fat cunt?”
“I don’t think any folks are.”
“Can you even see your cock in the shower?”
“Yes, it’s big enough thank you very much.”
“Jesus fuck…I could never be your size. I’d need to kill myself. But it’s great to see a bloater who is happy
with the way that they are – Fair play to you.”
“I can understand that and do you know what gets me through?”
“Chocolates??”
“No. Mindless violence to the likes of you, so I’m going to kill you now and save you from ever having to
take your skinny anorexic arse and vomit up another cheeseburger ever again you fucking weight
watching cunt!”

Hugh Cron

All Stories, Editor Picks, Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 462: Rule 17; Necessary Words; A to Z of Needless Words

Well here we are, the holidays behind us, in a brand spanking New Year, which, in my eyes, already looks as fresh as a recently widowed elderly French rent boy cruising the cafes in search of a breathing benefactor. But to those of you who insist on at least benign, if not kind or P.C. expressions–well, happy new year to you and many more I am sure.

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Fantasy, Humour, Short Fiction

My Fair Juan G Starring Boots the Impaler By Leila Allison

I was watching the 1969 Science Fiction flick The Valley of Gwangi on TV last month. It was playing on the ancient Philco set that connects the PDQ network in our sister realm of Other Earth to my home realm of Saragun Springs. The film was the final Ray Harrhausen/Willis O’Brien dinosaur picture. The story involved a thirty-foot tall, psychotic Allosaurus named (brace yourself) “Gwangi,” who somehow managed to reproduce (apparently without a Mrs. Gwangi) and survive at a “Forbidden Valley” in Mexico with other unlikely creatures for at least 145-million years–without, mind you, attracting notice until 1969–that from a reptile with the brain power of a caraway seed.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Half by Doug Hawley

Well here we go, we now say farewell and thank you to 2023. And as the year cleans out its desk in the present and moves into the archives, we close it with the last of ten reruns over the past nine days!

Longtime site friend Doug Hawley specializes in making the absurd seem possible. And that talent is extremely present in Half. It begins with an almost religious disease matter-of-factly diagnosed by perhaps the most dubious physician since Wm. S. Burrough’s Dr. Benway of Naked Lunch.

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All Stories, Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Mary, Joseph and the Baby by Diane M Dickson

To locate this Holiday Rerun, I had to go way the hell back in the vault to find this wonderful little piece by our own Diane M Dickson. Mary, Joseph and the Baby is truer to the spirit of the occasion than anything you can buy at Amazon and the dialect is musical. Unique but it gets across.

It’s an old story in many ways, but blessed are the poor and meek no matter what the corporations say.

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All Stories, Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Christmas Rerun – A Crow in a Pear Tree by Nik Eveleigh

The saga of site co-founder Nik Eveleigh’s Storm Crow series remains to this day excellent reading. A sort of forlorn hero, whose humanity is commingled with humour and despair. And good old Stormcrow appeared in a Christmas tale seven years ago. Seven years is a magic number as far as time goes, and rest assured that readers new to Nik’s character will agree that the old crow has aged well.

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Short Fiction

Christmas Rerun – Christmas Lights and Icicle Frost by Antony Osgood

Our Sixth Rerun of Christmas is by the elegant hand of Antony Osgood. Christmas Lights and Icicle Frost is a touching work about the way impending death sometimes creates lively miracles. “Torn by diagnosis, mocked by good fortune” Sarah H is able to appreciate and share the small good things in being. This one is not to be missed.

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All Stories, Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Christmas Rerun – Black and White Christmas by T L Tomljanovic

Tatiana Tomljanovic takes a look at Christmas through the eyes of a child and scores in our Fifth Rerun of Christmas. And yet these perceptions are both childlike and cynical. Even the “Christmas Miracle” can take Isla away from the funny smell in her grandparent’s house–that and her belief that God was the thing you say when you don’t know what to say.

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All Stories, Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Christmas Rerun – The Real Bad Snowman by David Henson

Today’s Rerun is brought to you by the darkside of life. It ain’t aimable Frosty awaiting these children, but during this season it would be an error to omit the truth about the many lives around us in which misery is pretty much a full time experience. David Henson has a way of injecting some light into the darkest of places, which should be a quality found in Christmas.

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