The noise was like a loud noise but much louder. I jolted in my seat, sending a blur of cat scattering from my lap. Big Jemmy stayed put. His ears closed over after the great Stomp riots of ’97. He only hears blue now. His eyes remained fixed on the latest episode of Celebrity Death Camp Warden as the players moved in a grotesque mime.
Continue reading “Royal visit by Deborah Thwaites”
Release is real. These days there aren’t many left who’ll deny that. We’ve all had our glimpses. Maybe you caught someone’s eye at a bus stop in the rain, and when they smiled back it was like something heavy tearing loose inside you. You felt the future drain away through your fingertips. Not your future, the future.
Continue reading “A Latecomer’s Guide to Release by Greg Golley”
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Mick blindsides me as I finish a cigarette and I fight the urge to crack him.
I’ve never liked him. His teeth are black from all the bootlicking and he’s punchable in a way that would make a heavy bag jealous.
Continue reading “The Summoned by Alex Sinclair”
“Mommy! Mommy!”
As the summer sun neared the horizon on this longest day, the heat of late June only fading slowly, Ann drew fingers through her dark hair, trying to work out the beginnings of a tangle. I should just cut it short, she thought. Everyone else my age does.
Continue reading “Night Stranger by Torger Vedeler”
The zen master sat on his tatami mat in the spare, spacious chamber of the temple. His eyes were half closed as he sat, deep in zazen, at one with everything. He became aware that he was at one with the universe and then realized that that awareness was a concept and that was an illusion. He took a took a deep breath, breathing in the universe. Then he exhaled. And thus he was at oneness again.
Continue reading “The Zen Master and the Genie by Rick Sherman”
Dan Bonner used his right hand to toss two keys to the moss-covered forest floor of Happy Valley Forest. The keys lay there glinting among the twigs and dead leaves. The throw sealed his purpose, to set his mind and body free from chance. He stood naked, one foot and one wrist handcuffed to a birch trunk. The forest stood so thick here, he could barely see the sky. That was the way he liked it, all the empty blue blocked so he could focus on the shade around him.
Continue reading “By the Beautiful Pond by Harrison Kim”
Nothing.
Nothing to see. Nothing to feel. Nothing to smell. Nothing to hear. No sense of orientation.
Nothing.
Not just the lack of anything tangible, but the absence of even the concepts to describe the lack of senses beyond the externality of… what?
Me.
Continue reading “In the Beginning by Lee Stoddart”
A demon places a sharp sabre in his hand, An angel gently whispers words of reassurance. The pain he feels is equal to having a dagger pierce his heart, the angel wants to take it out while the demon wishes to push it in further. Since he lost her nothing has been the same, he oscillates from melancholy to a furious rage that swallows him whole. This leaves his soul barren like a desert, an almost perfect ground for the deities to do battle. “Slay him and be done with it,” the demon says in a haughty tone.
Continue reading “A Quarrel Of Divinity and Impiety by Mirza Copi”
Ida hates the sunset. She also has a profound dislike for the ocean, Greece, Italian villas, and all 30,000 islands of the Pacific Ocean. But every morning she wakes up to one of them, rotating views out her window: a nightmare cycle of 5 star resort views. Sometimes she thinks she is already dead, stuck in a penitentiary of hell’s ennui where every day is more passive then the last.
Continue reading “After Dark by Nico Gurdjian”
Boots sank into the damp ground, charting his path through the mud. The long, gnarled wooden stick added its own accompanying impressions. Pulling the brim of his hat low to guard against the puddles of rain exploiting gaps in the trees, Vincent walked. Unconcerned about the trail he left, knowing nature would conceal it long before any of them rose. He’d dedicated his life to knowing their practices. A commitment borne of bloodline. They hunted. They executed. Without exception.
Continue reading “Beasts by Claire Marsh”
literally stories 