The night had muted the crickets and, as if the fluttering of their filmy, prehistoric wings brought the heat down, the air had cooled into the namesake fog of these Smoky Mountains. The clouds moved into the darkness, rolling down Evelyn’s tongue into her throat, joining the vast, black distances between the flickering bulbs of a far-off holler and the lantern light cocooning her as she worked.
Continue reading “Dead and Gone: A Reckoning by Ashley Laughlin”
Sometimes I go to Mordialloc pier to watch people fish. I never fish myself. I hate the smell and getting my fingers sticky with bait and having to watch behind you to make sure you don’t snag anyone with the hook and permanently blind them. But I like watching. Interesting things happen when you watch for long enough. Nothing of the adventurous kind. Just odd, amusing things squeezed between stretches of monotony. I am then assured that my life will, at the very least, be filled with amusing details if I care to look. I don’t hope for adventure anymore. The feeling I get when I return home from one is dreadful. I’d like no more of them.
Continue reading “Mordialloc Pier by Matthew Lee”
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Famous fantasy realms are ridiculously wealthy– them with their pool parties and scantily clad underage lawsuits in waiting. But for every emerald high rise in Oz there’s a dozen impoverished lands of make believe held together by duct tape and the wages of mental illness. My realm of Saragun Springs is as threadbare and stone soup as it gets, but that might be a-changing. Yes, prosperity and the torpedoing of what little charm we have may be just around the corner. Actually, it is up in the sky–and to paraphrase Dickie Plantagenet, we aim to pluck it down.
Continue reading “Hobnob Standard by Leila Allison”
By the time my mother mentions falling, I let the drone of her voice fade to the unawake part of my mind. Her words are a steady hum, punctuated by rattling breaths and muffled snorts as she clears the tangy scent of antiseptic from her nostrils. If I let my gaze drift away from her paper-white figure on the hospital bed, I can pretend that I’m alone. In my peripherals, she blends into the monotony, clear and soft as water. The only thing that moves is her mouth, but her ramblings are like static – barely present, and even more unintelligible when I focus on them.
Continue reading “World Tilting at Bedtime by Katya Lee”
A Favourite Place: Innerpeffray, Scotland’s oldest free lending library, established 1680.
Article by Michael Bloor
I’ve always been nuts about libraries. I’m pretty fond of bookshops, but libraries were my first and truest love. First of all, the local Carnegie library, where I went as a little lad, accompanying my grandad when he went to change his Zane Grey cowboy thrillers. Then, the central library in town, with its reference section, and its newspaper/periodicals section, with old men dozing in the central heating. The university libraries and The National Library of Scotland, where all manner of rare and wonderful books can be summoned up from the stacks for your study, all absolutely…FREE!
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever”
Well here we go again and by fuck this might be random.
I loved when a kid who I worked with in the hostels used that word in a way that I had never heard.
Continue reading “Week 451 – Marvin / Scott – Which One Deserves The Plaudits, RETIRE!! – JUST FUCKING RETIRE!! And Rickie Bell’s Karaoke Extravaganza!”
The kid had this puffy bee-sting face I wanted to shove into the toilet bowl. I liked him as soon as he came, breathless and sweating, through the door. I liked him more when he offered me a cigarette.
Continue reading “The Clown and The Kid by Ashley Laughlin”
Ms. Almond, our reading teacher, emanated a gaunt pallor and an unfit constitution, and she eschewed the bad breath of old age. She did not seem quite at home in her old woman ways—her shock of gray hair, her stoic and sad eyes, pools of blue that had seen far too much of the world, her permanent wrinkles that spread out like fans from the corners of her eyes and lips. Her etched forehead that told a thousand youthful stories.
Continue reading “The Slow Guiding Drift of Identical Things by J Bradley Minnick[1]”
She keeps her eye on the clock while circling the room to peer over their shoulders. They’re working on collages, gluing items onto black construction paper—magazine clippings, pompoms, scraps of tissue paper and string.
Continue reading “Worthy by Sara Weiss”
The FitnessGram Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues.
Our class lines up at the end of the court. The 20 meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. It’s that time of the year, again. I passed the stretching test handily––I like to tie my shoes standing up. Chin-ups and pull-ups I flunked, but it doesn’t matter. These results are for the state, not for a grade.
Continue reading “When Every Breath is a Blade”
literally stories 