The motel was distasteful. The wallpaper peeled off in strips, and water leaked from the ceiling into a near overflowing bucket. Everything had a yellow tint as the sun slowly set.
Out on the back patio, sat two men.
The World From This High by Andrew Jason Jacono
The World From This High
The stars are out chittering over the water and the bridge is cold on the backs of my thighs and for the last three years He The One has been jabbering in my head telling me to jump. I haven’t listened to Him until now, I’ve been strong and I’ve resisted, but there comes a point when you just can’t take it anymore and you give in and so here I am. I’m not happy about it but at least when I jump They’ll stop beaming all those messages into my head and They won’t be able to torture me anymore.
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The Line Man’s Last Drive by Harrison Kim
Scrawny old Bill Jackson worked twenty years as janitor at the mine. He swept the lunchroom, washed and waxed the office floors, operated the snowplough and weed whacked the grass. He liked to see things clean. After the mine closed, he spent most of his time driving up and down the highway and side-roads picking up cans and bottles. “Without me, the garbage would just pile-up” he told anyone who’d listen. He hauled discarded tires, old couches, rotten mattresses into the back of his pickup and drove them to the landfill.
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Where They Are by Hugh Cron
David
I just don’t know! What’s this world coming to? A security guard who is nothing but a slip of a girl. It’s not right.
But no matter. It’s the shopping centre’s problem. I have to admit that it’s nice that they give me my breakfast. But in saying that I’m paying them enough. She does check on me, I’ll give her that. But surely that should be a man’s job?
Walk on By by Jane Houghton
Christ. Almighty. Aunt Nell. Aunt. Fucking. Nell.
Bloodshot, enflamed eyes – well, eye: the right one. Skin like crumpled autumn leaves. Fleshy folds beneath her chin, dangling down like an over-spill tray on a coffee machine. A red, bulbous nose, courtesy of the ‘bloody rosacea’ that plagued Aunt Nell her whole adult life and transformed her nose into a beetroot.
It had happened. The unthinkable. The thing that she had been dreading for four years since finding out. She was morphing into Aunt Nell. Weird, you might think, turning into her aunt; turning into her mother would be more like it. A natural progression. What happens. This was what she found out: Aunt Nell was her mother. More on that can-of-worms later.
Literally Reruns – You Got That Right by Adam Kluger
Leila has brought out a piece by a regular contributor to the site. Adam keeps us on out toes with his off the wall stories and his art. He is a great friend and an unusual and entertaining writer. This is what Leila said:
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Week 281 – Head Eating Demons, Sharing Arse Administered Medication And Gaye Over Dion Everytime!
Well here we are at Week 281.
Every now and then I am slightly happy.
The last time I was truly happy was the 8th November 1983.
This week was not of that calibre but I did find something that I’ve been looking for, for a very long time.
Disorientation Day by Leila Allison
Walking Boss Cooper scythed me at the loading dock. She’d set up a blind and waited until the large “agricultural investment order” I’d charged to the company arrived and forced me out of my secret sanctum. Renfield had warned me that “the WBC” was prowling the campus for two suckers to present Orientation to the “fresh fishes” that day, as well as a butt to fill an opening at the Neverending Crisis. Although it was most definitely a day for streaming Hulu in a utility closet, necessity led me to venture onto the open tundra.
Crimson Coloured Raindrops by David Darvasi
Part One: A murderer I cared for
There was a young boy once who has read a lot – not for any romantic reason, other than his father being unavailable, and his mother being overly available. He spent most of his Saturdays in Chapter Zero (local second-hand bookstore and library) – not for any romantic reason, other than his father being unavailable. He would have spent most of his Sundays there too, but he stayed home instead – not for any romantic reason, other than his mother being overly available.
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Deleting Eve by Jessica Holzhausen
My client bought model T17 in April 2027 as a – I quote – ‘customizable sex toy with programmable character traits mimicking the behaviour of a real woman’. Mimicking – that is the code word here! Mimicking! The sex robot the prosecution likes to refer to as ‘Eve’ has never ever been a real woman. T17 was an advanced tool that might have looked like a human, acted like one, but only because its programmers and my client’s own adjustments embedded that into its code. Mimicking! My client did not commit murder, he deleted a computer programme he himself created according to standards set by T17’s original programmers. He deleted a computer programme from his own device. My client therefore pleads ‘not guilty’.
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