It was amazing to him that at a time like this, he should feel so completely and utterly alive.
Continue reading “Cornwallis Surrenders by A. Elizabeth Herting”
Tag: fiction
All I Love Dies Alone by Leila Allison
Squirrel Pen Diary: First Entry
Last Wednesday morning I entered Our Lady Star of the Sea church during mid-week mass. While two dozen or so senior citizens went through the ancient, dusty rites (monotonously administered by an equally ancient and dusty priest), I rose unseen and snuck upstairs to a small balcony that communicates with the church’s attic. I climbed atop the guano splattered stone rail that hugs the balcony and balanced myself on one foot and held the other out as though I intended to take a seventy-foot step onto the marble walkway below. After I had done all that, there wasn’t much else to do except wait for someone to notice me.
The Dancer, Maria Elena Gonzalez by R Harlan Smith
Katerina Valencia Contrerez is an angry old bruja who lives outside the village of Dos Cruces. She hates her nephew, Cecilio. She beats him with her fists and chases him away. So Cecilio made her a beautiful walking stick to get in her good graces. Now Katerina beats him with her stick. The villagers say the lesson is, don’t arm your enemies. They say Cecilio is a great teacher.
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Week 175 – Perspective, Invective and Uncharted Waters
Hello again one and each.
Another busy and interesting week at LS and, as always, a few unexpected twists and turns.
It goes without saying that we’ve had five more brilliant stories (more about those in a bit) but we’ve also had a whole host of wonderful submissions that have already filled up slots for the next few weeks.
That last line requires context – or perhaps perspective – in order to carry its full weight. A theme we’ll be touching on quite a bit over the next couple of hundred words I suspect.
Continue reading “Week 175 – Perspective, Invective and Uncharted Waters”
The Funeral by Kevin Counterman
Sonny’s hand shook as he took a drag from his cigarette. Rain drops from the eaves above bruised onto Sonny’s faded grey scaly cap. He watched on as his lifelong friend Daniel reached the walkway to the funeral home. With his head down, and hands in his rain slicker’s pockets, Daniel walked down the cobbled path. “Sonny,” he said with a nod, as he reached the tall, twin hinged doors. The two men shared a moment of a silence, backs toward the funeral home, long faces towards the rain, as Sonny’s cigarette began to fade.
What Follows (The Chair) by R. Harlan Smith
On the night Frank Pearls died, he gathered his little congregation around his chair and gave each of them a little snack like a priest giving Holy Communion. They received their snacks gleefully and smacked their lips to show their appreciation. Then he settled back in his chair, swallowed another glass of whiskey, filled the glass again, and in his calm, pleasant voice, proceeded – sometimes he would read to them from Joyce, or Kierkegaard, or Al Capp, or sometimes he would just talk to them about philosophy, but he would never tell them it was philosophy. Tonight he would talk.
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The Talk Part Three – Driving While Black by Frederick K Foote
“Hey, Beth, you got a minute? I need your advice.”
“Greg, not really, however, I’ll always make time for a call from my ex-husband and the father of our children. First of all, you should move out of that horribly dangerous Oak Park place where you have domiciled my children. Apparently, the law enforcement thugs have a year-round open season on black people in Sacramento.”
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Week 174 – Avoidance, Rat-Motherfuckers And Ideas You Wished You Had Thought Of.
Here we are at Week 174 and if there was anyway I could eradicate a Saturday, I would!
I honestly wish I was anywhere in the planet other than here in Scotland for the next week. In fact I wish I was on another fecking planet.
Continue reading “Week 174 – Avoidance, Rat-Motherfuckers And Ideas You Wished You Had Thought Of.”
Sure by Adam Kluger
He was a black man.
African-American.
“Yo Nigga! to his friends but these days he didn’t have any.
The Woodpecker Telegraph System by Leila Allison
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Elmer Fudd’s laugh speeded up ten-thousand times comes close to describing the sound of a woodpecker beaking the holy hell out of a metal chimney cap. A pneumatic “uh-huh-huh-huh-huh,” with a little “phu-bub-buh-tuth,” thrown in for variety, gives you the soul of the thing. Wikipedia calls this behaviour drumming.
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