– I’d get yer ginger man from Billions on the tv on a boat, take him out there to Mutton Island and let him do some inside-trading on me.
The other two shrieked with laughter. It was the three cleaners’ second smoke break since lunch.
Tag: fiction
Oh, the Wounds He Wore, Death His Neighbor (Jimmy the Meterman) by Tom Sheehan
Small-eyed, small-eared, a mole perched like an ace of spades on one eyelid, a mastoid-depressed void behind one of those ears, pale of complexion, shoulders it seemed worn down by weights almost too ponderous for life, Jimmy Griffith was the essence of obscurity as he leaned on the bar of the Vets Club. All members knew Jimmy by name and by sight, but few had ever heard him say much more than a good morning or a goodnight, or “I’ll have my second beer now, Al,” or “Brownie,” if Brownie Latefox was on duty. This was the two-a-day ritual at the end of walking his route about town, measuring water consumption, reading the meters down in fieldstone cellars or the utility rooms of newer bungalows. Read the meters, jot the numbers, cheat a bit for a friendly face, or go a step further, like disconnecting a meter for six months at a time, not a soul at the water department or in the confines of Town Hall ever the wiser. Nobody knew how happy Jimmy was to have the job, nobody in God’s creation. Or why.
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Literally Reruns – Mercy by Diane M Dickson
Leila Allison has been mining in the nether regions of the site again and this time has managed to embarrass one of the editors.
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Week 201: Graves, Literature and Almost Certainly Some Other Stuff
Almost sort of exactly 201 years ago, Jane Austen died. I must confess I haven’t read much (any) of her work despite Pride and Prejudice and Zombies being on my reading list for some time. Never being one to allow a lack of knowledge to get in the way of a good opinion however, I’m prepared to wager that her collective works didn’t contain many references to the humble kilogram.
Young Jane would have been almost sort of exactly 18 when the French said pas plus to the grain related measurements of the time and invented the kilogram. She would have been far too busy working on her short novel Lady Susan to bother with such new-fangled frippery. She no doubt noted however that the initial name for this kilogram was a grave and as such the literary seed for her zombie based works was sown.
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He Promised Her An Ocean by Miriam Burke
Taddeo gets up with the sun; he prides himself on not being one of those Brazilians who think every day should be carnaval. He looks out his twelfth floor window at glass and concrete towers that are home to people from all countries of the world, people who live peacefully together. He’s proud of his adopted city.
Glooning the Chartreuse Lemon by Leila Allison
A Few Rings of Hell’s Bell Ago
The little god of unfounded happiness at an unlikely place seemed to be smiling on me. I was up 500,000 bit-pesos at the online Uruguayan poker site, and someone had finally restocked the Snax Machine in the lobby with chili-cheese Fritos. Yes, the good guys were winning, and no one was supervising my activities. I fondly recall whistling “Dance Ten; Looks Three” from A Chorus Line, prior to carb-loading for that long elevator ride back to my office, deep in the bowels of the Smiling Face of Darkness.
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Rags By Tom Sheehan
Rags, her son Greg’s dog, was a mutt who came home one day with her 12-year-old son, probably after being lost or dropped off by some callous owner and most likely hungry and attracted to Greg’s demeanor, soft voice, gentle hands, and a whistler, and that for much of his days when permissible.
Grendel’s Pouch by David W. Landrum
The baby had gone to sleep and the boys and Eva, her daughter, had gone to watch Manton drill with the other men in the exercise/muster the village held each month. She cherished the silence. It reminded her of the quiet of the convent—not a pleasant memory, but she did experience some beautiful moments in the years she lived there. She hurried to the kitchen table, wiped it clean, dried it, and spread out the fine linen cloth she had spent too much money on, opened a bottle of ink, got out a stylus, and began to write.
Lemondrop by Meghan Louise Wagner
I sat a long time before going up to the house. Vanessa lived on the left side of a duplex behind the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge. There was a pink beauty salon chair on the white paint chipped front porch. Weathered cardboard boxes filled with National Geographic magazines and empty Marlboro 100 packs were stacked in the corner. After I knocked at the door, it opened and I saw Vanessa standing there before me. I knew her as the regular who always asked for extra soymilk in her reusable coffee mugs but my manager called her Fat Madonna. I didn’t get the joke until he showed me a picture on his phone one day.
The Vow by Phoebe Reeves-Murray
On impact, the demon exploded out of the steering wheel airbag and ripped my husband away from this world.
literally stories 