All Stories, General Fiction

The Night They Brought Him Home by Jake Bristow

When they brought him home that night, the lid was strewn canted off the wooden lip and jacks and queens ornamented astray around the box like a ring of fire. Someone- I do not remember who- had loaded coal into the fireplace and after some poking it begun to lick its flame at the iron grate. Ma was cold and Paul and Jane huddled around the hearth for they were cold but I suppose not as cold as him. Still, it only felt right to keep him warm.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Gordo by Ashley Earls Davis

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His eyes are fixed to the street, staring blankly at the late sunlit cars queuing over the cross. Like he’s thinking. Or perhaps he’s pissed. He lifts a full ten of stout to his pouted lips and takes two long gulps, spine arched tautly at the dust-strewn pane. Is it Rod? Or that bloke we called Doggo? I scratch my neck and try to remember his name. He lowers his glass and digs out some chips from a bowl in front of him. Dips them in tomato sauce and shoves them in his gob. Reaches for his cold one again. I grin at him. His hand movements are overly cautious. Like those of an old codger’s. Well I suppose we are both over the hill now aren’t we? Poor us bastards.

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Fantasy, Humour, Short Fiction

Anita Knows by Leila Allison

Act One: What Goes Up Eventually Leaves a Crater

Nowadays, the amazing comeback of the boy band, the billigits, is all the rage in Saragun Springs. The cycle of fame travels extremely fast in fantasy realms. For six weeks the boys (natives of the Springs) were flying high, superstars in the Springs’ sister realm called Other Earth; launched by the spectacular success of their debut album, meet the billigits (billigits do not use capital letters). Yet six weeks later, the band imploded, and the billigits were just another pockmark in the town of hasbeenville.

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All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever – John the Revelator by Dale Williams Barrigar

John Lennon in his Pickwick glasses is like a character from a Charles Dickens novel, or much like Dickens himself in his concern for social justice and his endless sympathy for the literal, and figurative, orphan, outsider, and underdog. Lennon can also fruitfully be compared to perhaps the only other English writer of the nineteenth century who rivals Dickens in staying power and popularity. Like Lewis Carroll and his beloved, living Alice, Lennon’s life was all about expanding the mind, and through the mind, the heart.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Short Fiction

520: Don’t Touch that Dial, More Words From the TV Generation

In Stephen King’s On Writing he mentions that he is among the last generation of writers who learned to read and write before television became a staple of American life (as I’m sure was the same in other developed nations as well).

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All Stories, General Fiction

Blood Lovers by Gerald Coleman

At the haggard edges of New York City, the Fourth Avenue Local of the RR Line started or ended, depending upon your intentions, at Ninety-Fifth Street on the far ass-end of Brooklyn, where the city skyline was but an aspiration. You could barely see the Statue of Liberty if you were on a rooftop and knew where to look.

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