All Stories, Fantasy

Woman With Jigsaw Puzzle by Tom Bentley-Fisher

“I am the Seven Wonders of the World … I am the Endless Ocean and the Garden of Eden … I am the Mountains and Valleys and a Great Desert.” 

Gabriella has a complex system for organizing the loose pieces. What might look like a haphazard pile of small cardboard shapes is a clearly thought-out symmetrical pattern waiting to be employed in a system of elimination “far too sophisticated for even the Venezuelan postal service to figure out”, she used to tell her little boy when they sat together day after day working on a new puzzle, waiting for him to die. “It’s like DNA,” she’d say, “every piece unique onto itself.”

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction

Everyone Dies by Danni Meek

There’s a man in my home.

He’s staring out of the large windows, the ones that I sit by and read my books because they’re the only source of natural light on this side of the apartment. The light from the moon almost gives him a glow, making him look vaguely angelic. It’s almost comedic how ironic that is, considering the fact that he’s broken into my home.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Science Fiction

The Time Machine That Was and Wasn’t at the Same Time by Jonah Jones.

Several years ago or yet to be, Frank Fullie had written on a whiteboard in his garage:

“You can jump forward in time by falling asleep.”

“You can jump backward in time by looking at old photographs.”

“Sideways in time by having empathy with another.”

“Outside time by dying.”

As an afterthought he’d written “Does the Higgs field come into it?”

Continue reading “The Time Machine That Was and Wasn’t at the Same Time by Jonah Jones.”
Fantasy, Humour, Short Fiction

The Insolence of the Lambs: A Feckless Fable by Leila Allison

Our cast

Re-education Story Lady………Dame Daisy Kloverleaf

Truant Officer Aye………………Beezer Baw

Truant Officer Nae…………… Barkevious Baw

The Lamb Sextuplets…………..Themselves

Principal …………………………Penrose the Flying Weasel

The Bogey-Sheep……………..Juan Gee

Superintendent Renfield………Herself (actually drunk, a method actress)

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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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