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.”
I hate that eleventh step. It’s the darkest one. It always has been. I remember noticing it when I was around twelve years old but I couldn’t say anything, not to my parents.
I blamed them. I thought when they died it would leave me alone. It didn’t.
I’ve suffered that step for forty years now. But I don’t think I’ll need to for much longer.
Well here we are at week 272. We thought it best as week 271 was last week and using that again would just be pish.
The weeks are fair flying in. We’re nearly half a year in.
Continue reading “Week 272 – A Norwegian Hero, Assuming Wankers And A Walloper With A Door.”
“Hi, is this Mark? Mark Chance from Deakins High School?”
Shane was sitting in front of his laptop. On the screen, an image of two young boys standing in the shade of a half-pipe, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. A date, digitally imprinted in yellow, told Shane the photo was taken the spring of 2006. The boy on the right had a bloody chin and was smiling, pushing his cheeks up and squinting his brown eyes. His hair was black with brown roots and hung past his jaw. Red speckled his white Thrasher shirt. The other threw his head back in laughter, his half-black-half-bleached hair unkempt. This one wore black pants and a black The Clash tee.
“It’s Shane Lynch.”
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