Tag: death

All Stories, General Fiction

Ascension by Nigel Pugh

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Brutal, late May. Wet blankets of hot weather, suffocating. When the midday heat receded, Thomas nixed the novellas (Mattie’s legacy), filled a tall glass with seltzer and ice, and padded into the yard. He sprayed the concrete and his chair, sat on the damp fabric facing east toward the fishtail palm and the privacy fence, looking up at the eaves of the cottages the far side of the street. Old Florida. Wood and stucco. Termites and social security checks. Not yet gentrified.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Reconciled to Eternity by P.R. Woods

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“Where are you a bishop then?” she asked, eyes darting around his drawing room, drinking in the fur and velvet, taffeta and silk.

“I’m tempted to say Bath and Wells,” he chuckled, perched earnestly on the armchair. His guest had slipped off her shoes and, cat-like, tucked her feet comfortably away.  

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Last Number by Arpi Vanyan

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She had done the same thing every evening for three years.

She would pour tea into a cup with a chipped rim, sit by the window, pick up her phone, and dial a number.

The same voice, every time.

“The number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable.”

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All Stories, Horror

The Cold Baby by Christopher Ananias 

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Content that some readers may find disturbing.

She must have looked alluring, though, on her midnight shopping trips to Walmart. He imagined a shopping cart full of red meat and baby clothes. Dr. Lieberman worked alone inside the morgue. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees.

 A toe tag, said Jane Doe. Lieberman, a single man in his mid-forties, studied her with a clinical detachment which made him a poor guest at the hospital mixers. Her enormous stomach under the sheet was hard to miss. It would be a cold baby.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Convert by Christopher Ananias

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I stood alone at my stepmother’s funeral, fondling a plant, watching rain bead down the fogged window. The funeral parlor’s black walls, and black curtains were heavy-handed leaning too much on the death knell. Ten lines of bright red chairs clashed with a maroon carpet. The organ music droned like it always did—my whole life.

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All Stories, Horror, Short Fiction

By The Colour of Our Coat Shall You Know Us By J.S. Watts

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Where to begin? ‘Where’ being the significant word.

Some places seem to have been created to be a home for the disconcerting and unknowable. Dartmoor was the natural petri dish for The Hound of the Baskervilles. It is so… elemental. The dirty, dark and narrow alleys of Victorian London’s East End spawned Brother Jack, whoever he was, or might still be. But other places are so mundane you can’t imagine anything beyond the norm happening there.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Cost of Dying by Kayla Cain

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It’s like sitting in a cozy lamplit living room. A couch. A loveseat. Two cushioned chairs facing a mounted screen. Instead of a coffee table, though, a desk stands in the center, and instead of our favorite sitcom, we scroll through an electronic contract.

Funeral Agreement with Authorization to Prepare a Decedent for Burial

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All Stories, Fantasy

The Old Fisherman by Joe Ducato

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Every night the pictures on his lampshade came to life.  Rodeo cowboys on galloping stallions threw ropes at the moon.

The boy’s sister once called him “Nutsy-Crackers” because of the strange things he was always seeing.  Later she shortened it to just Crackers.

In the middle of the night, he lifted the window (quiet as a thief) climbed out and lowered himself to the ground, praying that the weight of all the coins in his pocket wouldn’t rip through the material.  The rest of the house slept.

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

Death on a Full Stomach by Christoper Ananias

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The two men sat in the dim kitchen. Drinking. Dark clouds hung low in the gray sky like they wanted to open their bellies. Cigarette smoke curled from a glass ashtray. Larry Miller got up from the yellow Formica table and pointed at a steak bone on a plate in the sink. The white plate was smeared dark with A-1 Steak Sauce. Larry said, “That was Jenny’s last supper. A T-bone steak, a baked potato, bread n’ butter, and a Coke.” He seemed proud to Thurman like he wanted Thurman to appreciate it.

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