It’s 2:30 am and Charlotte and I are wide awake holding hands in our new bed in our new house. This is our third sleepless night in our new home in the West Virginia wilderness. It’s the howling, hooting, chirping, scraping, squealing night noises that keep us from sleeping. There’s a sudden scraping sound on the roof and the sounds of a cavalcade of creatures marching above our heads.
Continue reading “Elves by Frederick K Foote (contains sexual content)”
My eyes open and my head is thick. Not as thick as my hair must feel now that the twin sisters of sand and salt have done their work, but thick all the same. Tiny grains shift against my scalp in the breeze but I’m too full of slumber to worry overmuch. I lie back against the sand. Close my eyes.
The beach is quiet now. The laughter and shouting, the frenetic madness of noon has dissipated like the heat of the day. I can see the sun dipping over the water if I raise my head a little. Golden puddles melting into the horizon. For a moment the world is aflame and then twilight succumbs to night.
Rest.
Here begins the third (official) tale of the accumulated adventures of Stormcrow.
I guarantee* that by reading Any Crow In A Storm first you will find this episode 19.73%** funnier. Episode 2 was rubbish. Just ask the Literally Stories editors. Go on, I dare you***
* not an actual guarantee.
** not an actual accurate number.
*** an actual dare.
Either way, in this episode we find our halfling-hating legend so full of his own splendour that he can’t even be bothered to turn up until the last couple of paragraphs…
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“Will he be long d’ya reckon?”
“How the bloody hell should I know?” The large-headed swarthy guard rolled his eyes and snorted only to have the effect ruined by a migrant rope of snot who, in excitement and glee at having found a hitherto unknown trap door, smacked straight into the guard’s epiglottis. Mucusy dreams of the bright lights of throat town were shattered in the hawk and spit moments that followed, and as he lay dying, drying, against the stump of an ancient oak the plucky little gobbet found solace in the fact that he had, at the very least, had a go.
San Luis Obispo, California – August, 1939
Inside a private screening room, MGM chief Louis B. Mayer and his right-hand man, producer Mervyn LeRoy, have just finished watching a test print of The Wizard of Oz. Mayer is not satisfied with the cut and has instructed the projectionist to run it again, this time with the sound turned off.
Continue reading “RuPaul Saves the Universe by Michael Patrick Marino”
Our resident Statsmeister, Nik Eveleigh — as he doesn’t give a fig feel free to mangle the pronunciation of his fine family name any which way you like for instance try Evil-Eye, Evel-Eeee or in Afrikaans I am reliably informed, Ever-LICCCCHHHHHHH — has been busy tweaking his spreadsheet.
Cape Town this time of year is a trifle warm I understand, so we mustn’t judge. However, for once Mr. Ever-LICCCCHHHHHHH’s obsession with figures — I mean extremely useful hobby — has produced a stat worth dwelling on for more than 0.37 seconds.
A submission we received at Literally Stories in the past couple of days tipped the total word count for all said submissions over the one million mark.
Yeah. I know. I should have warned you to sit down first.
Folk as far afield as Reykjavik and Rotherham, Berlin and Barnsley are reeling in the face of this earth-shattering revelation and no doubt wondering if in fact it was their story that triggered this sensational milestone and what exactly this means to them.
In an ideal world a pop-up box should have appeared on the ‘lucky’ author’s screen informing them that as the writer of the one millionth word to be read by the Literally Stories Editors they had won a holiday for two to the Seychelles.
Sadly, Pop-Up blockers being what they are these days thrills such as that are a thing of the past.
What hasn’t changed is Monday’s promptness at the beginning of our literary week…
Continue reading “Literally Stories – Week 58 – One million words”
Mrs. Pascal’s first rule, no sweets in the parlor.
My fingers dig into the folds of my gloomy clothes, clawing at the satin that piles under my fingertips. It does not do to indulge yourself in front of the grieving, Genevieve. Her voice scratches against the walls of my head. Not when there is work to be done.
Perhaps not, Mrs. Pascal, but to deny one their sweets in time of such pain does not do as well.
Continue reading “Mr. Pascal’s Funeral Parlor by Nikki Macahon”
New Year’s Eve
Every year has its angel. And don’t make the mistake of believing each angel is a good one. For in any age, there are only half as many good angels as there might be, and twice as many wicked angels as there should be. And even this estimation fails to take into account the ambivalent angels that can feebly preside over a year, and in so doing, cause more grief and discontent than any legion of demons.
It is always on the last evening of each year that the new angel assigned to the new year arrives to acquaint itself with the world over which it will hold sway for 365 days. And so it was on December 31st, 1912, when The Angel of 1913 arrived in town.
We wish all our readers and writers a Happy Christmas and a Merry and successful New Year.
Here are our reflections on 2015 …
37G Henry Spiler.
Henry Spiller had long stopped caring about the missing letter on the nameplate demarcating the faceless geography of his workspace. Terry O’Callahan over in 19F had got his fixed up after his wife dropped by for lunch and nagged him about it for three straight days.
Maybe Terry used up the last L anyway
Henry had bigger things on his mind. Deadlines had to be met. In seventeen years he’d never missed a single one but this would be tight. The faint chirp from his terminal could only mean things were about to get tighter.
Continue reading “The Adamant Carbonisation Of Henry Spiller by Nik Eveleigh”
The snowman smiled. He was driving a ’72 Lincoln with the windows down and the A/C on full. He smoked Kools and drank frosty cold cans of beer. The Stones played on the eight track. It was December 24th.
The Voice was speaking to him. It had been all afternoon. It was the same Voice he’d been hearing since he’d opened his bottle cap eyes and walked off of the abandoned lot of his birth. The Voice had told him to steal the car. It was nameless. The one that whispered. Sometimes it even spoke backward, as though in tongues. Now it was saying, “Smoke, drink and drive fast, for snowmen melt sooner rather than later. We have seen the future, and you are not a part of it.”
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