All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Gosh darn it, I’m wet! by Glen Dungan

Alright fine.

Okay so the rubber duck bobs in the water, ignorant of the vapor steaming from the pool and rising to the banisters and balustrades in the warehouse. It wears a yellow raincoat and holds in a cartoonish way an umbrella inscribed with the words “Gosh darn it, I’m wet!” It drifts in between two pillars of steam, bumping like a lily pad just underneath the nipple of child peddler Marc “The Lobster” Cameron. So fat is the nipple that one might consider it a breast. The tattoo on Marc’s pectoral is further an example of this fact, a strange attempt at a Chinese dragon that might have looked better on a fit body but has since taken the form of Mushu from Mulan. At least I think that is his name. I don’t know. I’ve never seen it. That or the godawful remake. Don’t ask how I have an opinion of a movie I haven’t seen. I just know. Okay. All I’m saying is that this really goes to show that some movies should be immortalized, having already stood the test of time with intergenerational audiences.

But anyway. I digress.

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All Stories, Fantasy

No Good Deed by Marco Etheridge

An overcast sky spills milk-pale light over a blighted landscape. The light is too weak to shadow the dry-stone walls that run along a potholed lane. The stone walls rise to a vanishing point at the crest of a muddy hill, and over that crest comes the figure of a man.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Leaving Macedonia by David Flynn

Joe’s body twitched in his bed, as he knew it would.  He hadn’t slept since he left the war zone in Macedonia.  Violent dreams with buckets of blood, screams in the night, these had been predicted in the article he had read.  Now, safe in Amsterdam, he was living the symptoms.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Hundreds of Little Pieces by Rachel Sievers 

The glass falls from the counter and I find myself sucking in air right before an explosion of small bits of glass and red liquid spill out over the beige tile. I mourn the glass in the aftermath, not that it is anything special, but I hate to waste anything regardless of its obscurity of significance.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Delete Browsing History by Diane M Dickson

Who doesn’t want to delete unpleasant items from history and replace them with something palatable? It is a common theme in stories, especially in our speedily evolving technology, when it is easy to highlight and trash information we do not particularly care to see. The muse wonders “what if?” in regards to changing reality on a magic machine. It’s already a common theme, but then again, love is a common theme; pain is a common theme; addiction is a common theme; ghosts, vampires, murder, family, war, depression are all common themes. The key is writing a common theme type of piece well, which is a challenge because you have to grab and hold a reader who might feel that s/he has seen it all before.

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Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 359 – Listening, Questioning And I Was Sad To Have Missed Seeing Jane Leeves But I Was Always Happy To Have Brought The Coal In For My Old Gran Instead!!

It seems ages since I typed one of these.

Leila has done a sterling job!!

I would like to mention Christmas and New Year, not for any particular reason except to say that I heard one of the best come-backs ever. One of the most cutting observations from a comedienne. And a one liner from another comedienne about being a vegan.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Coral, Not Pink by Rachel Sievers

The cupcake frosting compacts and puddles in my mouth, slow and sticky going down my esophagus. I cough almost choking, shoving the rest of it in my mouth, and look down at the plastic container. It is hard to see in the dark of the closet but I can see neon pink sprinkles of three that remain.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Friend by Donnie Cox

Arthur Nagel is an ugly, little man. He stands barely four feet tall, and his head is much too big for his body. The muscles on the left side of his face are totally paralyzed causing his face to droop. Because of his looks, most people think Arthur is mentally deficient. He is not.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Wrecking Ball by Stevie doCarmo

“I’ve done it more than once. Which makes it possibly a bad habit.”  

 “What’s that?” Rama had asked.  

She’d been complexly twisted in her bus seat, patchouli-scented Jessica, pea-coated back to window, New Jersey gliding by behind her in what Rama remembered as a raw and drizzly November afternoon. “I just tell some people straight-out I’ll sleep with them if they want.”  

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All Stories, General Fiction

Blue by Selina Sheth

Blue is the color of anxiety, the smell of despair, the sound of confusion, the taste of fear, the touch of doubt. For Jamshed, it brings back jumbled flashes of long-buried images and emotions. A neon cobalt-stained hospital wall at age five, the time he’d smashed his knee and waited endlessly for a doctor to arrive, any doctor. An inky high school test paper that he’d known he’d fail before even looking at the questions. A joyride in a stolen navy-hued Honda that had landed him and his slow-witted friend Pesi in jail for a night.

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