Category: Short Fiction

All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

All I Love Dies Alone by Leila Allison

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 Squirrel Pen Diary: First Entry

Last Wednesday morning I entered Our Lady Star of the Sea church during mid-week mass. While two dozen or so senior citizens went through the ancient, dusty rites (monotonously administered by an equally ancient and dusty priest), I rose unseen and snuck upstairs to a small balcony that communicates with the church’s attic. I climbed atop the guano splattered stone rail that hugs the balcony and balanced myself on one foot and held the other out as though I intended to take a seventy-foot step onto the marble walkway below. After I had done all that, there wasn’t much else to do except wait for someone to notice me.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Horror, Short Fiction

Memory Drive by L’Erin Ogle

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I am a dutiful wife.

It’s Monday.  Every Monday and Thursday, I visit Lucas.  I always bring new flowers, and since it’s the summer they’re from my own garden.  There are daisies and tulips and baby’s breath.  It doesn’t matter what I add to the water, or how I snip them, they are always dead when I come the next time.  The staff will have ensured there are no dead leaves scattered around the vase on his windowsill, but the stems will remain, withered stalks decaying in their coffin.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Talk Part Three – Driving While Black by Frederick K Foote

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“Hey, Beth, you got a minute? I need your advice.”

“Greg, not really, however, I’ll always make time for a call from my ex-husband and the father of our children. First of all, you should move out of that horribly dangerous Oak Park place where you have domiciled my children. Apparently, the law enforcement thugs have a year-round open season on black people in Sacramento.”

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Woodpecker Telegraph System by Leila Allison

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Elmer Fudd’s laugh speeded up ten-thousand times comes close to describing the sound of a woodpecker beaking the holy hell out of a metal chimney cap. A pneumatic “uh-huh-huh-huh-huh,” with a little “phu-bub-buh-tuth,” thrown in for variety, gives you the soul of the thing. Wikipedia calls this behaviour drumming.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Table 6 by Monica Strina

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We live in Gino’s Café, Beaufort South Carolina, Minerva and I. Here’s the reason why I called her that, before you start a-wondering too: the moment she came out of me, she already had this face like she’s thinking about something all the time, so Gino said to call her Minerva – ‘Like the goddess of Wisdom,’ he says – and I did. It’s not like there was anyone else around to offer me a different name.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, Short Fiction

Progress, Not Perfection by Fernando Meisenhalter

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I rob banks, and I always get away clean, except this one time when my old lady ratted me out to the cops.  She wanted part of the money to pay for her smack addiction, and I didn’t give her any, so she went to the cops, told them about the heist, and I did time.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Taps by DC Diamondopolous

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Peter crouched in front of the attic window and gazed down on old man Mueller’s cornfield. The plow, unhitched beyond the stalks, turned north like he meant to continue but got interrupted. Peter looked toward the barn, no sign of Mueller’s horse and buggy. The Amish and Mennonite neighbors, with their peculiar ways kept to themselves. Mueller only talked to his pa when he accused Rufus of killing his chickens, or a year ago, the day his brother’s mind broke when Gabe went screaming from the veranda twisting his ears as he ran into Muller’s cornfield. That day Mueller shot out of the house, the top of his unsnapped overalls flapping as he sprinted after Gabe, Mueller’s wife and five children dashed onto the porch, the boys still in their pajamas.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Curse by Martyn Clayton

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Sometimes investigative reporters come sniffing around for news of Lionel Fetlar.  They’ve heard he’s living on the south coast now, a town that remains resolutely unfashionable while those nearby have undergone a modest transformation following the influx of the affectedly on trend from that London.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Humour, Short Fiction

Masquerade by Roger Ley

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The seed was sown when Riley joined the amateur dramatics group. He had played a couple of minor roles, first in a Sheridan play then in a Dickens, when the email arrived from the am-dram group’s administrator. It was forwarded from a film company needing extras for a few days filming in the local market town. He arrived at the crew’s temporary encampment in the central car park and was told he would be playing a policeman. He hadn’t worn a uniform since he’d been a scout and was surprised by the feeling of empowerment it gave him. The helmet, the collapsible truncheon, the mock pepper spray, it was a new dawn, he felt marvellous, confident. He was somebody, he was a policeman.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Shoe in the Wall, or Viola’s Place by Tom Sheehan

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Day closed in around me, and the night that followed, reverie and recompense fighting for equal space, or so it seemed, for hours on end. I had come down the road for about 30 miles, my car loaded with a good assemblage of scrap wood from packing crates, the heft and feel of each piece hanging on my fingertips, like echoes on the rebound; you know, the kind that refuse to let you sleep, wondering what tree in what forest a man with a purring chain saw in his hand had figured to be good enough for cutting. Their images were locked up tight for me: I had cut wood in the state forest for six years at that point and tree selection had never bothered me, winter warmth with odds had grabbed me from slumber, working with my saw, the split logs in stacks growing each day in measureable cords.

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