Category: Short Fiction

All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Sea by A. M. Smythe

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There’s a heap of luggage unceremoniously dumped on the floor: a heterogenous mix of rucksacks, coats, shoes haphazardly placed into order. The clickity clack of a moving wagon indicates that arrival is imminent but not yet achievable. The window pane thrums with a barely concealed impatience for the wild swishing-night of the seaside. It’s an unplanned trip and everyone knows that all unplanned trips have a different sort of underbelly. And if time passes differently, if the group feels that they just rushed in when they rush out again, then that’s just part of it.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Guy Who Showed Up For the Job by Mark Joseph Kevlock

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He wasn’t the guy we expected, that’s for sure. He looked like he’d never worked a day in his life.

“The idea is to make everyone fall in love with you, understood?”

“Easy enough,” he said. Cocky bastard.

They had clothes and stylists galore waiting for him. He ignored most of what they told him as if he knew better. Maybe he did. Charisma is a very indefinable quality.

The first time he walked out of the back and I got a good look at him, I was floored. He was drop-dead gorgeous. I nearly forgot what the hell we were there for.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Ghosts By Desmond Kelly

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I see ghosts. I hear their voices. Watch them move across my vision. Sometimes they talk to me, but it isn’t them. It’s people from the past. They’re frozen in my memory. A word, a touch, a phrase. The what if’s and what might have been.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Busker by Marco Etheridge

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I see the guitar case first, full more of hope than of the hard currency of shining coins. The kid sits on the pavement, half-hidden in the shadow of a low granite wall. He’s doing a pretty fair rendition of Hey Joe, working a beat-up acoustic guitar. The thing needs new strings, but he’s getting it done. That strange magic, the universal language of rock lyrics, washes away the kid’s Austrian accent. The chords walk down the neck, Joe kills his woman, the crowd ignores the kid.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Pool by Elizabeth Appleton

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Steam played across the water’s surface in lazy swirls, nudged by the breeze and stretching away like cigarette smoke.  Behind the hedge, lips pressed to her kneecap’s polished, taut surface, she could taste salt on her skin and, somehow, it mingled with the vision of dragon’s breath steam above luminous water to punch a sudden ache in her throat.  Smelling chlorine, she longed for the sea, for sand that grew cool as she dug her feet deeper, and her father’s hand on her bony, eight-year-old spine, walking her towards a quiet tideline.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Motherlove by Lauren Bilsborough

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The grass was wet round the back of the job centre; ten am here was a damp ass and frozen toes. Stella pulled a 70cl bottle of Gordon’s Sloe Gin that she didn’t pay for out of her bag, slotted it between her thighs, and rolled a cigarette she didn’t plan to smoke.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

MVP by Frederick K Foote

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Part I

November 29, 2018, 10:31:03 a.m.

Interview room at the Sports League of America (SLA) headquarters in Dallas, Texas. The room has video and audio recording equipment, a conference table seating twenty, water in plastic bottles on ice with glasses and napkins. In attendance is a court reporter, a camera operator, Elsa Dayton, Chief Investigator for the SLA; John Henry Brown (JHB), running back for the Kansas Kings; Abigail Thornton, attorney for JHB, Tucker Borden agent for JHB

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Apotheosis by Simon Levick

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The fork in the display case glinted under the lights.  It rested on a shiny black plastic podium, and impaled on its tines was what appeared to be a human finger.  He was pleased with the finger and gave a grunt of satisfaction.  It was his own finger, pinkie of the left hand, plaster cast thereof.  Title of work: give/take/eat.  Listed in the catalogue as item no. 17, price £6,000.

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