I need to thank Leila for the last two postings. She stepped in when I was a bit preoccupied.
But you have no such luck today folks as it’s me again.
Continue reading “Week 349 – Feet Coverings, A Wish On Mr Coopers Sexual Technique And A Recipe For A Burn Worse Than Thrush.”
I stood there naked. I let a small smile tickle the corners of my lips. I watched several people’s lips do the same. These were people who came because they understood what being naked meant. These were people who were here because they liked my craft. Knew about my craft. These were not people that I was nervous in front of. They had explored my work and enjoyed it and were here because they wanted to see it and be part of it. I liked these events. I liked sharing my nakedness with them. It was easier to be voluble to strangers.
Continue reading “Except with Strangers by Rachel Sievers”
After twenty years, Abel Gittle finally figured out a proper response to his life. It was April of 1968. Abel went to bed on a Wednesday night, said goodnight to his wife, Sarah, then woke up Thursday morning, committed to eternal silence.
Continue reading “Silence by Henry Meyerson”
Clara looks up from the edge of the bed. Her eyes are red and swollen. She dashes to the wardrobe, blurting something about a different pair of shoes.
“The black flats are fine, hon,” I say with my softest voice. Next thing I hear is her scream, the crash of the shoe rack, her sobs: those unbearable sobs that cut through my flesh. I rush to the closet. She’s curled up at the corner, empty boxes strewn everywhere. The edge of her hand is bleeding.
Continue reading “Her Special Day by Nicholas Katsanis”
It was not the love of eating fish that drove Kwajo out to sea, though he knew that taste better than most. Nor was it the love of clawing with his paddle through the powerful waves and currents, or struggling to drop the net overboard and then retrieve it when heavy with catch. Every morning, the fishermen waited on the beach for the third wave to blanket the collision of the first two, aimed the bow of their dugout canoe at the horizon and shoved off into the chilly mist. As he listened to his father’s chant to motivate them, young Kwajo did it because he was proud to work with men.
Continue reading “Dixcove by David Chappell”
I ask for one last Budweiser. And my bill. I’ve had what three beers? Surely, no harm in a fourth. It’s a Friday night. My voice breaks a little, the pause hanging over the pot-scented bar, humming like some force. The signs stare at me from the dull mahogany-colored walls. Bud. Coors Lite. Fat Tire. Red and white lights, mixed with piercing blues flicker over the bar, over the floors covered with napkins, possible vestiges of puke.
Continue reading “Cut Off by Yash Seyedbagheri”
Ironic contrast and compare fiction is easy to conceive but tough to deliver. Thus Authentic by David Lohrey is a piece that underscores its own name. The story is simple enough but the author deftly captures a moment and lets it go unharmed. It’s a little thing, like a hummingbird, easily damaged if handled without care.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Authentic by David Lohrey”
The Graveyard Game
I grew up across the street from a graveyard. By old world standards Ivy Green Cemetery is freshly dug. Still, it was founded in 1902, which makes it the oldest boneyard in town. Then again, there are only two.
The cemetery is fourteen and a half acres seated in a sprawling hillside that faces west. When the weather is in (usually it’s not) you get a fine view of the nearby Olympic Mountains.
Despite its relative youth, Ivy Green is almost at capacity. There are only a few prepaid plots left to fill. Yet it could take a long time for that to happen. Nearly all of the plots belong to women; as everyone knows, nothing dies harder than an Old Lady.
Continue reading “Week 348: The Graveyard Game and Rejected Classic Special Episodes”
That morning I was a thorn between two roses.
My wife Kay sent me out to water the flowers along the front and the driveway side of the house, and my mother, just now marking her first year as a widow and not yet a pest by visiting too often, coming for the day. It was a Saturday, a lazy day off and I wanted to fool around for a while before the day got going.
Continue reading “The Last of the Roses by Tom Sheehan.”
The chimes sound. “I’ll get it,” Michael Robeson says to his wife, Denise. “Hospice must’ve forgotten something.” He opens the door and finds a man about shoulder-height to himself. The fellow is wearing a black suit, white shirt, and red bowtie.
Continue reading “The Devil You Don’t Know by David Henson”
literally stories 