She pulled out the Nuclear option and tossed it on the table like the Ace of Spades.
Nothing to do but bluff.
He then called her back and said “Let’s not ruin three lives here. Stick to the current agreement. ”
“Ok, but you better make your payments every month. Get a job at Starbucks.”
“Yes. I will,” he replied not knowing exactly how he was going to do that.
And that was it.
Henry’s knuckles turned white as he clutched the scarred armrests, listening. The time has come, he thought. The oakwood throne suddenly seemed little more than a pile of firewood.
But the sound died in the halls.
Henry eyed the heavy old door. It looked forbidding, yet it let everyone come and go. Everyone but him, and him only.
It just sort of came out.
They were sitting on the couch. Dave was watching and laughing at a screwball comedy where, during their honeymoon, the hero and his wife get their signals crossed. She winds up in Bermuda at a four-star hotel while he finds himself with the Inuit eating muskox somewhere near Greenland. Somehow, they reunite.
The worms are hook shaped, tiny translucent segments with black antennas and bulbous brown eyes, specks floating.
I can see them in the corner of my eyes, wiggling and multiplying.
They have to come out.
The doctor thinks I’m crazy. I tell him about the worms squirming away in my eye, swimming in my tear ducts. I see them, whether my eyes are open or closed. I feel them, the same way I could feel a bug in my ear, a spider in my mouth. The relentless whisper of antenna against my eyelid makes it twitch nonstop.
I stared at the black homespun dress, large bonnet, prayer cap, and starched white apron that covered her from neck to ankles. She held the hand-lettered sign that read, IOWA. I pulled off onto the shoulder. “You’re not from around here, are you?” I asked.
In this year of unrest, Daniel Luis was sharing a small house with his mother, sister, his pregnant wife, and daughter. He needed work.
“You will be the new janitor at the Municipal Theater,” his uncle said, “It pays little, but the work is easy. Clean up after every performance. Do your work and be invisible, and maybe in time, I can find you something better. Here is the key to the door. They say the theater is haunted, so wear your crucifix.”
Continue reading “Theatrical Spirits by Kilmeny MacMichael.”
Willard Joseph Lord Pufferton, late colonel of the 1st Regiment of Hodson’s Horse and later 10th Regiment of Bengal Cavalry (Lancers), India-released, Asia-departed, separated from the British Army in 1870, reined in his horse at the head of Denby’s Creek as it flowed from the heart of Earth in America’s Rockies foothills.
Continue reading “Standing-to at Denby’s Creek by Tom Sheehan”
There’s a quick double rap on my apartment door and my son, Elijah, opens the door and walks in like he’s paying the rent. He ain’t. “Pop, what’s up dude? What’re you watchin? Why don’t you have the game on? You got beer? I know you got beer.”
He goes directly into my tiny kitchen and comes back with two bottles of beer. He flops on the couch beside me.
“Someone really lives here? Geez. Always thought the place was abandoned.”
Detective Kolar undid her seat belt and opened the door to the cruiser. “Even in this state, it’s still a multi-million-dollar home. I’m sure he can’t sell it, plus you know how stubborn these old guys can get.”
“I guess,” said Detective Slaski. “Still, you’d think he’d put some of that website money into renovations. It’s…I don’t know, a little creepy keeping it like this.”
‘We were fair game
but we have kept out of the cesspool.
We are strong.
We are the good ones.
Do not discover us
for we lie together all in green
like pond weeds.
Hold me, my young dear, hold me.’
Anne Sexton, Rapunzel
The sound at the end of the phone was a metallic female voice, not her mother’s. “I’m sorry.” Pause. Her mum’s voice: “ANGELA.” Pause, then the robot woman again.
“… cannot come to the phone right now. Please leave a message after the tone.”
“Mum, I don’t want you to worry, but please call me back if you can. I just wanted to tell you… I forgive you.”
literally stories 