Category: Short Fiction

Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns: Paper Lined Tables by Rachel Sievers

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The two things that stand out for me in Rachel Sievers’ Paper Lined Tables are displacement and expectation. A hard to face big problem is usually addressed through an unrelated smaller trouble, and waiting for something is often better than getting that something. Mostly, the things most wrong in our lives are impossible to articulate without receiving negative pushback from a person associated with the woe. And dreaming of a best pal dog without accounting for how you will deal with the uptick of chewed slippers, barking and dogshit in your life can be stressful.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Week 386: What’s It All About, Five, No Four Works of High Fiction and the A to Z of Buying a Round For the Unsteady Jukebox

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What’s It All About?

I’ve begun my fifth year of feeding the little gray menace in the header–Misster Andy Hisster. Andy is in fine health and continues to live the pirate life even though I constantly offer him different situations. Off and on for the last few months, Andy has had a sidekick; a young Tuxedo Cat (also pictured–goody, I see he was photobombed by my device) first named Patch, but after an exchange of enlightening interoffice communications with Diane, I now call him “Alfie”–as in the ne’er do well portrayed by Michael Caine.

I’ve always been suspicious about Alfie during the six months or so he’s tagged along with Andy, for me to feed under the hedge. Alfie never shows up when the weather is bad nor does he ever appear to have slept under the building, covered in cobwebs like Andy often is. Andy is indifferent to personal grooming, which is unusual for a House Cat, but not unseen in the ferals. Alfie is a dandy. Never a hair out of place. Fop.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Ben by Hugh Cron – Warning – Adult Content.

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Before Ben knew it he was sixty.

He wasn’t sure if that bothered him but it was now forty one years.

He stayed in what he called his ‘But and Ben’. He loved the old bed that pulled down from the wall. Ben reckoned that there was a cure for cancer within it’s mattress but he didn’t care that there might have also been a hundred different types of lurgey living within the confines of decades of dead skin and bodily fluids. It was quite comfortable.

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Short Fiction

Name Game By Leila Allison

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Vital Information

Before we begin, it is important to know that Satan never cheats at games. In fact she may be the only thinking being in the universe who is honest to a fault when it comes to games of chance. But her truthful nature does not mean that she is a good loser. Oh, she’ll shake your hand and heartily extol your virtues as a gamer; but she’ll never forget the sting of losing. In that regard it might be better if she did cheat, or at least flipped the board to conclude a Monopoly match with a mistrial. But, as we will soon see, that is not her way….

Now On With the Show

The Witch needed a name for her newest season on Earth. The need had nothing to do with business. Her vast wealth and properties were under the enchanted aliases of her human familiars–a trustworthy lot because they knew that something much worse than death (a something most likely to be as creative as protracted) awaited any servant caught dipping in the Witch’s till. Such certainty reinforces loyalty. No, the want of a name stemmed from the idiotic peasant need for labeling things.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns: Walk on By by Jane Houghton

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Even the stars will go out, one by one, the great and the small, at entropy all will be done. And such is the case with Margot, a small star in the show business sky, yet a first magnitude sun in Jane Houghton’s Walk on By. This is a fine example of parallel writing. The current story nurtures the backstory and both resolve together in a bittersweet, even uplifting conclusion.

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Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 385 – Only Waiters Appreciate, If You Have Nothing To Write…Don’t And The Birds Will Nest Well This Year In London.

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All throughout my life I have been able to give tips, whether they were wanted or not!

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All Stories, Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns- Hi, I’m Stacy by Nyx-Bean

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Quite often a writer will streak across our virtual sky, a word comet, who graces our viewing for a while before moving in. From late 2016 into ’17, Nyx Bean gave us four memorable stories, and it is a shame that they should sit in the vault, alone, neglected.

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Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 338 – Time And Motion Has Never Been For Me, Loads Of Words And Huge Testicles.

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And here we are at Week 338

First question for anyone who would like to answer – I was wondering, do any of you actually make time for writing either each day or even a few days of a week?

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Short Fiction

Meet the billygits by Leila Allison

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Word has it that the first billygit was the result of a passionate affair between a runaway Disney Princess and a Flying Monkey on leave from the Wizard of Oz. The Princess was tired of being a thirty-two-year old woman forced to play a “tween” and the Flying Monkey was bored due to the liquidation of his Witch. It was a “what happens in the Emerald City stays in the Emerald City” sort of fling. Or so I heard. I really can’t say much more due to copyright issues, but I won’t refute it, either. Whatever their origin, the now plentiful billygits (who did not stay in Oz, and insist on a lowercase b to start their name) are. Yet unlike most things that are, billygits multiply when some PDQ Pilsner is poured over their heads; this action instantly produces a twin billygit.

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