All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Bald White Man in His Sixties by J C Rammelkamp

It started on Facebook, a notice from a neighborhood dog fanciers’ page about somebody dousing a piece of steak with anti-freeze and tossing it over a fence to an unsuspecting dog, which ate the meat and died.  (Apparently these attacks have been happening for quite a while now, and they believe it is the same man.)  Then it was taken up by the neighborhood listserv, the modern-day call-tree, and further warnings about this criminal – described as a bald white man in his sixties – prompted an outpouring of fear and outrage.  (He appears to be targeting pitbull breeds in the Lakeview area of Potawatomi Rapids.)  A vigilante call went out; posters went up on phone polls; you heard nervous chatter in the grocery.  You could practically hear the bugle summoning us to action.  (Let’s work together and catch this guy so no more of our neighborhood pets have to suffer from his horrible acts.  PLEASE SHARE & SPREAD THE WORD!!!)

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Persistence of Ruins by Barbara Krasner

White clapboards and wooden slats nailed across double windows peek through a veil of house-high ferns, maples, and elms. Leaves caress the places where shutters may once have been. Along the front in red and white reads a sign: Private Property No Trespassing. A vacant driveway sits to the south, marked off by a heavy chain, its endpoints hidden by foliage.  

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Breakdown by Matthew Roy Davey

“No one’s going to be looking,” he snapped.

He heard her sigh but didn’t turn to look. After a moment, the sound of her struggling up the embankment and the crashing of undergrowth came to him as she made her way into the bushes that covered the upper slopes.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Historical

Angola Togo Conversations with Samuel Little and Jim Jones by Frederick K Foote

I’m Angola Togo, a journalist. Recently, I listed influential people I would love to interview to better understand our history and the human condition.  

This list included Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, Hammurabi, Hannibal, Budda, Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Mahatma Gandhi, The Dalai Lama, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Jr., Muhammad Ali, Paul Roberson, Langston Hughes, Albert Einstein, Zora Neale Hurston, Jackie Robinson, James Baldwin, Nina Simon, Octavia Butler, Jimmy Carter, and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction

Snow White Meets Little Red Riding Hood by Tony Dawson

Snow White had had a hard day. Her spirits needed a lift, so she decided to break a rule of a lifetime and sample some of her own product. Although her real name was Pearl, she had adopted the nickname her suppliers had given her, “Snow”, because she was the major distributor of cocaine on the west coast.

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All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever: Fame; or The Queen of Crucifixion by Dale Williams Barrigar

Prologue

Hello. The target audience for this humanly-written, essayistic mind, heart and soul exploration is: poets; creative writers; writers; artists and “creatives” of all stripes; spiritual people; people interested in history, and the future; anyone interested in any or all of the above.

If you can’t jive with that, this writing isn’t for you.

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Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 536 -Where Has All The Sense Gone? Did They Ever Have Any? And Don’t Cheat!

Well, hello there folks!

Hope you are all well and I am delighted to welcome you to Week 536!

I know that I have prattled on about snow-flakes and the enraged and the PeeSeee Brigade and I decided to look at it with some positivity.

…I couldn’t think of any but I did consider this.

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Historical

Under the Stars by Rachel Prizant Kotok

May 1939

In the heart of Berlin, our family created and cultivated a magnificent bookstore—Wunderbar. Green and gold glazed tiles adorned the Art Deco exterior. Famous clientele such as Pablo Picasso, Josephine Baker, Sigmund Freud, Greta Garbo, Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, and Hannah Arendt crossed borders to spend time in our shop. Some exuberant patrons described Wunderbar as a divine pilgrimage.

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All Stories, Science Fiction

Lost In Thought by Dan Bell

An urgent knock on the apartment door woke him.  He lay there, waiting for his mind to coalesce around a coherent thought. The knock turned into a thump, which soon became a rapid hammering, accompanied by yelling. Gustald recognized the voice. It was Gerti, a work colleague from Concept Compliance. He only vaguely knew her. Enough to give a polite greeting as they passed each other in the corridor, but certainly not sufficiently well to expect her to be banging on his door in the middle of the night. Why is she hitting the door with her fists at all? he wondered. Is the access sentry inoperative?

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All Stories, Horror

The Breather by Rebecca Petty

Evelyn stared out the kitchen window willing herself to ignore the breathing coming from the living room.  It was a wet labored breathing. She wiped the last dish and set it in the rack. Another breath was pulled from the lungs in the other room.

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