The garishly colored neon sign announcing “Bailey’s Come Back Inn” and the booming of the bass coming from the band inside could easily be seen and heard from the road.
The gravel parking lot was full, leaving patrons no choice but to park on the patchy snow on the lawn near the building.
Though it had started to snow and he was still miles from a warm bed, Alex Redford turned into the lot and parked up on the lawn.
The October morning broke bright and sunny. A perfect fall day in the Northeast. The Jamison family was, as usual, scurrying around the house with kids getting ready for school bumping into adults getting ready for work. All in all just a typical morning in Paradise Heights… until it wasn’t.
They say the wolf ate the magician.
They find the man lying on the stone floor, chunks of his flesh unfurled around him like oversized rose petals, torn apart by thorny fangs. Broken bottles litter the shelves of his home, caught in liquid pools of strange colors that hiss and spread like angry tears. Tattered black books pattern the floor, spines up and pages squashed, sprawled open like dead crows.
Leila has been perusing Hugh’s back catalogue and has come up with another of his little gems. This is what she said:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Forgotten Memories by Hugh Cron”
Here we are at week 249.
This is a special posting as tomorrow on the 17th, we have been going for five years.
We have a few bits and bobs that we want to do so I’ll get this weeks stories out the way first.
Continue reading “Five Years!!! A Celebration Of Literally Stories.”
Quan falls into the patient breakfast line at the hospital for the criminally insane, he peers at the kitchen staff through pushed in black glasses, grips his tray in both hands, nose sniffing right over its plastic surface, checking to perceive odors and blemishes. He mentally calculates the time distance between himself and the food. “Maybe ninety-eight and a half seconds.”
Continue reading “Breakfast At The Hospital for the Criminally Insane by Harrison Kim “
He promised to keep me safe.
A promise that turned out to be total and complete bullshit. Brent also vowed to be faithful, stick around in sickness and health and a bunch of other things that went by the wayside the moment he decided to tell me about his ridiculous, “mid-life crisis” indiscretion.
Continue reading “Eternity of Descent by A. Elizabeth Herting”
I know superhero stories are way over done these days and you are looking for new angles, but please don’t point your camera lens in this direction. I am just that guy’s sidekick. Strictly off the record and never to be quoted. Standing to the periphery, sans a speaking role, smiling and happy the blinding spotlight never shines here. The glint off the bleached and veneered teeth of my rich alcoholic narcissist boss is enough to blind even the most skeptical of fans to his deep narrative flaws. Sure, some might say he’s a vigilante. For others he is The Bad Guy, but aren’t we all sometimes? I’m just happy to help and not bothered by your narrow good to evil spectrum.
The groaning and gibbering column of mourners stood over the small, still warm cat. All wept and shook save three. The old man, leaning slightly harder on his left side, looked only at the boy, his daughter’s son. The boy was silent also, though wore the look of the savaged. The third to keep from buckling to the emotion of the scene was the vet who had administered the barbiturates.
(“Please come to read for us from your new book.”)
I want to let the audience enter the cubicle where the work came from. This is what I’ll tell them:
Continue reading “A Dreamt Preface for a Reading at Nahant Library by Tom Sheehan”
literally stories 