Tag: death

All Stories, Fantasy

Rescue by Michelle Stoll

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I got the idea to resurrect Paul because eleven years had passed since we’d spoken, including the year he’d been dead, and I wanted to tie up loose ends. I never liked the way things with us ended. Exploded is a better term. I blamed him, even changed details of our story to make myself feel better when I told it. Now, I wanted to do better and set things straight.

When I say bring Paul back, I mean in a loving way. “Jesus wept,” is the shortest verse in the Bible. It’s just before he calls his friend, Lazarus, out of the tomb. Nobody called Lazarus a zombie that I know of. I think he was happy to be back. Maybe a little disoriented, but happy to see his friends and family. Although my history with the church was no love affair, I had a fondness for things like compassion and hope. Lazarus was a hopeful story, and I believe in second chances.

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Short Fiction

Grayscale by Carolyn R. Russell

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From behind a second story window, we three watch for the girl. Fissured by time and fractured by turmoil, the glass allows for less than optimal viewing, but my sisters and I can see well enough to take immediate notice when her slight figure emerges from a subterranean staircase and melts into the crowd. This particular evening is boisterous and punctuated by the trappings of revelry. A new year is preparing to throw its filthy arms around the neighborhood, animated celebrants studding the sidewalks like remnants of a tenement fire.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Shadow by T H White

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Tom Mitchell had lived alone for longer than he could remember. His wife, Lily, had passed away a decade ago, and their children had long since moved away, caught in lives of their own. The house, once filled with laughter and warmth, now echoed with a quiet, unrelenting stillness. Even the walls seemed to breathe differently, like they were holding their breath, waiting for something – or someone.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Meant for the Dead by Susan Jennifer Polese

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Envision a seamless sky lining a hillside speckled with white stones. The air surrounds them, almost scentless, incensed lightly by pungent moss. Gaze ahead as the lush hills overlap, take hold of one another, layered green and hazel veils each saying to the next: Spring.  Translucent Spring. And I could see through it and taste it as anyone can at seventeen. Every day seemed to be like this one, then, endless and shady, but on this Tuesday morning curiosity did more than lead me. We ran. Run with me now.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

The Spoils by Toni Juliette Leonetti

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Themes that some readers may find distressing – see tabs

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July 7, 1917, Arras, France

It was no great shock to hear of corpses rising from their graves.

Not in this toppled world, where men turned moles. Where the fresh aged fastest, stooped and wizened in their dark holes, dreading the sun. Where a man’s next breath might kill him before he smelled hay in it. Just that, no longer the searing pineapple and peppered bleach of chlorine. Phosgene suggested merely a whiff of musty hay before the man’s lungs drowned him. Drowned, with no water in sight.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Night They Brought Him Home by Jake Bristow

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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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All Stories, General Fiction

Immortality By Frederick K Foote

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“Why, oh, why Negro niece, do you sit there on the steps and cry?”

“Oh, woe is upon me and ruthlessly rides me because my father, your brother, my mother’s husband, has died. And our weeping is without end.”

“Ah, but your father was 80 and 10. It was about time for the old Negro’s story to end.”

“True, true, but he will be gone, his voice and presence will be missed, his words will be longed for, and his absence will leave a great emptiness.”

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All Stories, Fantasy

Orville Baumgardner and the Morning Glories byJames Hanna

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Author’s Note

Orville Baumgardner is the chattiest of men. He grew up in an Indiana farm town, graduated from a small rural college with gentlemen’s Cs, and used his gift of gab to get elected to the Indiana House of Representatives. Orville prides himself on having read over two hundred books, including most of the classics, yet sustained a career as a populist politician by promoting deep state conspiracy theories to his constituents. After twenty years, Orville gave up politics because he had a crisis of conscience. He has since lectured on numerous topics, including abortion, book banning, and corporate corruption, and his spiels have appeared in many literary journals. Although he has recently left this world, he continues to lecture in the afterlife.

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