All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever: Not Quite the National Treasure by Geraint Jonathan

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Well this is a bit of a different piece – but that’s what the Whatever post is all about. Ladles and Jellypoons we give you an essay by Geraint Jonathan.

A pioneer in the use of manacles, Richard Topcliffe’s imagination knew bounds, if you’ll not forgive my saying so.  He was a man who lived and breathed his work – going so far as to design his very own ‘torture-machine’, compared with which, in his own words, “the rack is mere child’s play.”

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All Stories, christmas hellweek, Editor Picks, Short Fiction

Week 512: Ho Ho No!!!

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Ho ho humbuggery

I am tired of PC Christmas. I figure a grown up can endure the Christian God for about six weeks every year without becoming a whiny child about it. Most of us knew that Christmas was bullshit growing up, but I never turned down a present from Santa nor have I ever failed to drop a coin in the Salvation Army bucket.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Are You Ready Annie? by Martin McNeil.

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Annie awoke to the feel and smell of soft, clean linen against her skin. Yesterday’s flight had exhausted her, but she’d slept well, and felt rested. She lay on her back wriggling her toes, deriving a childlike pleasure.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Short Fiction

The Promise by Russell Fee

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The lake breeze chilled the back of his neck as he bent over the boulder to inspect the patterns of lichen spreading on its surface like an ink spill. This was the one he was to find. As the receding waves sucked the water from the sand around it, the rock sputtered and gurgled as if it were alive, a nursing infant or a dying soul. He had trekked almost three miles from his cottage to reach this point on the beach, the farthest out on this side of the island. From here it was fifty miles to the mainland over the surface of an inland sea. He removed his clothes, tossing them into the water. He was to carry nothing. Standing nude, he waited, facing the dunes that rose to the stretch of trees above the beach.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Notion by Chris Klassen

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“It’s a lovely day,” my friend, a small sweet person, said to me as we stood on the lawn next to the sidewalk on a warm morning, “and I want to take you to my favourite place, a place I frequent for peace and calm and gentle thinking.” I had never heard of this penchant of hers before, even though we had known each other for a long time. She began walking, meditation-like, with soft quiet steps, and I followed more clumsily. The sidewalk was dust-swept and the grass on each side was manicured meticulously like it had been treated with scissors, like a hair stylist had trimmed it instead of a landscaper. We walked silently for a minute or two.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Nora in Five Acts by Leila Allison

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Act One

Nora Lynn Manning was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on 6 December 1941. Her parents, Arlene and Jay, were high school sweethearts who realized too late that they did not like each other all that much. Still, they chose to marry before Arlene began to show. Like so many hideously bad ideas, it was considered the “right thing” to do.

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All Stories, auld author, Writers Reading

Writers Reading – Review by Dale Willliams Barrigar 

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Kafkaesque

Franz Kafka has a sixty-something-word story called “The Watchman” in the translation from German. In this piece, the narrator keeps running back and forth in front of the watchman in order to taunt him, while also being terrified that he might be arrested at any moment, but unable to desist. In sixty or so words, Kafka encapsulates the outcast outsider, the paranoid underdog known as the modern human being: the contemporary everyman.

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Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 511 – Don’t Let Them kid You, Go Out For A Regular Beer and Inappropriate Ink.

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Here we are at Week 511.

I hate this time of year.

I hate the greed of the supermarkets – Just look at any dangling clip-strips, dump bins and every piece of space that is occupied by some shite or another.

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All Stories, Science Fiction

Human Resources by Salena Casha

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The first message on Elana’s iCom pulsed red as she stepped out of harassment training. This job gave her no time to breathe. When she’d signed on, they’d told her the cadence would be intense, like drinking water from an Old World firehose. Ironic, for obvious reasons. Just the thought of filtered droplets made her throat hum. Given the time, given her title as Head of Human Resources and Logistics, making jokes about water wasn’t ever in good taste.

It was her tenth day.

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