All Stories, General Fiction

I Tried to Eat an Apple by Billie Chang

I tried to eat an apple whole the other day. I spit it up on the tile, watching as my saliva bubbled atop the cracked checkers. Vince and I laughed hard at this: my attempt, the fall, the wet sound of bruised apple flesh. We stopped only after Vince sat on the wicker chair so hard it splintered. I put a blanket over it and Vince biked home, using his jacket sleeve to gather my spit-stained apple and throw it outside – for the squirrels, he said. Three days later, Mom took the blanket to wash and when she screamed, I told her that Hurricane Nancy must’ve done it. Mom said that wasn’t funny; last month’s hurricane had taken Grandpa’s beloved chicken coop and now he had to buy the factory-farmed eggs they sold at the grocery. I said, “Wow, what an inconvenience!” and was grounded for a week.

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Fantasy, Humour, Short Fiction

My Fair Juan G Starring Boots the Impaler By Leila Allison

I was watching the 1969 Science Fiction flick The Valley of Gwangi on TV last month. It was playing on the ancient Philco set that connects the PDQ network in our sister realm of Other Earth to my home realm of Saragun Springs. The film was the final Ray Harrhausen/Willis O’Brien dinosaur picture. The story involved a thirty-foot tall, psychotic Allosaurus named (brace yourself) “Gwangi,” who somehow managed to reproduce (apparently without a Mrs. Gwangi) and survive at a “Forbidden Valley” in Mexico with other unlikely creatures for at least 145-million years–without, mind you, attracting notice until 1969–that from a reptile with the brain power of a caraway seed.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Half by Doug Hawley

Well here we go, we now say farewell and thank you to 2023. And as the year cleans out its desk in the present and moves into the archives, we close it with the last of ten reruns over the past nine days!

Longtime site friend Doug Hawley specializes in making the absurd seem possible. And that talent is extremely present in Half. It begins with an almost religious disease matter-of-factly diagnosed by perhaps the most dubious physician since Wm. S. Burrough’s Dr. Benway of Naked Lunch.

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All Stories, Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns – Mary, Joseph and the Baby by Diane M Dickson

To locate this Holiday Rerun, I had to go way the hell back in the vault to find this wonderful little piece by our own Diane M Dickson. Mary, Joseph and the Baby is truer to the spirit of the occasion than anything you can buy at Amazon and the dialect is musical. Unique but it gets across.

It’s an old story in many ways, but blessed are the poor and meek no matter what the corporations say.

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All Stories, Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Christmas Rerun – A Crow in a Pear Tree by Nik Eveleigh

The saga of site co-founder Nik Eveleigh’s Storm Crow series remains to this day excellent reading. A sort of forlorn hero, whose humanity is commingled with humour and despair. And good old Stormcrow appeared in a Christmas tale seven years ago. Seven years is a magic number as far as time goes, and rest assured that readers new to Nik’s character will agree that the old crow has aged well.

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Short Fiction

Christmas Rerun – Christmas Lights and Icicle Frost by Antony Osgood

Our Sixth Rerun of Christmas is by the elegant hand of Antony Osgood. Christmas Lights and Icicle Frost is a touching work about the way impending death sometimes creates lively miracles. “Torn by diagnosis, mocked by good fortune” Sarah H is able to appreciate and share the small good things in being. This one is not to be missed.

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All Stories, Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Christmas Rerun – Black and White Christmas by T L Tomljanovic

Tatiana Tomljanovic takes a look at Christmas through the eyes of a child and scores in our Fifth Rerun of Christmas. And yet these perceptions are both childlike and cynical. Even the “Christmas Miracle” can take Isla away from the funny smell in her grandparent’s house–that and her belief that God was the thing you say when you don’t know what to say.

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All Stories, Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Christmas Rerun – The Real Bad Snowman by David Henson

Today’s Rerun is brought to you by the darkside of life. It ain’t aimable Frosty awaiting these children, but during this season it would be an error to omit the truth about the many lives around us in which misery is pretty much a full time experience. David Henson has a way of injecting some light into the darkest of places, which should be a quality found in Christmas.

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All Stories, Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Bonus Christmas Rerun – The Perfect Personification of Religion by Hugh Cron

Since it is Christmas Day itself, we add a bonus story by our own Hugh Cron. It is not our object to deride those who have faith or get sentimental about the holiday. And Hugh’s The Perfect Personification of Religion states the true meaning of Christmas better than a fleet of Rudolphs. It is a tale of common decency and a priest who made himself holy through his dedication.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Christmas Rerun – A Little Red Wagon, A Long Remembered Face by Tom Sheehan

Merry Christmas, even to the humbuggers. Today we present two in a series we call the Reruns of Christmas. James McEwan began this party yesterday, which will last through Sunday. And there will be no rest for the wicked because the new year begins with new stories next Monday.

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