The muses are beautiful, but dangerous.
They are kept in silk lined stalls.
They have a very short life expectancy. Two days from the time the first stitch is placed, because without food and water the skin dries up and shrivels, hanging too loose on the body to properly ink.
They are all silent, in honor of the very first mute muse, the first muse to become a book. The thing is, no one even remembers the poems or title. They only know the legend of the mute muse.
Young Trace Gregson, thin and curly at eleven and generally happy-faced, cringed whenever he saw Dirty Molly Sadow. If there was such a thing as a bad witch about in the world, she was it. People said her toes were black with earth rich as The Hollow, and that she smelled foul as chicken leavings.
Here we are at week 168. How time flies!
I’ve been asked millions of times how we decide on stories. It followed a billion questions about me literally exaggerating.
It all comes down to us discussing and being as fair and open minded as we can. We focus and are professional to a fault.
But sometimes our thoughts go off on tangents and my fellow editors end up giving me an idea that becomes something else.
With that in mind, which is me really explaining to Nik and Diane why they have read some of this before, I can tell you that both of them and Easter gave me the idea for this post.
Continue reading “Week 168 – Prompts, Tangents And Afterlife Black Pudding.”
People don’t give much thought to disappearing land. I know what you’re thinking. But no, they don’t care. Take it from me.
When that sinkhole appeared in Louisiana. People gaped and talked and then a week later they forgot. That very same sinkhole that grew to twenty-six acres in the matter of days that less than half of the U.S. knew or even cared about, but I digress. No one batted an eye.
My Mum didn’t die a peaceful death. She got bitten on her toe by a rattlesnake whilst walking through the big park at night in her flip flops. She didn’t have the cell phone with her because my Dad had it that night. The poison got into her veins and stopped her heart. The next time when we saw her, she was all stiff and puffy. But her face was angry, most likely about the cell phone, I think. My Dad says she comes back in the form of a hurricane every few years or so and it’s our goddammed duty to weather the storm. He says they can call ‘em whatever they want – Irma, Katrina, Harvey, but they all Hurricane Josephine to him.
Continue reading “The Many Sad Fates of the Family Jones by Lucy Caird”
Carly’s hair is falling out. She leaves gold strands everywhere, Gretel’s nightmare version of bread crumbs. We don’t talk about it.
The ridiculous battle, hopelessly lopsided in the enemy’s favor, sent deserters scattering into the flaming woods, shot hopeful messengers down in their tracks, and, perhaps as an afterthought, stuffed the triage tent to the flaps with wounded soldiers. The overblown histrionics, the saucy horse that trotted into the tent strapped with dynamite, might have struck a jaded audience as faintly humorous.
Somewhere along the line it all got out of hand. Somebody was robbing graves at Riverside Cemetery, sitting just above the Merrimack River on a flat hilltop. Stealing coins, too, strange as it seems. That’s the kind of thing can jerk a town right off its feet, even if the spread of the cemetery was closing fast on its capacity and a new site required.
Here we go again folks, Week 167 is thrust upon us.
‘Thrust’ was my inspiration.
Over the last fortnight there has been a common theme between Scotland and America. (This is grasping at straws and not the straws that choke whales, these ones are anorexic and used as sex toys for thread worms straws.)
Weird that! I’ve mentioned thread worms in my last two posts. There is no attraction, honestly, it’s just went that way.
Continue reading “Week 167 – Large Dongs, Wee Allegations And Big Black Choppers.”
Eight a.m. in San Juan, California and it’s already eighty-two degrees on this June morning. I’m in running shorts and a tee-shirt as I step out my front door to pick up the paper.
The black and white patrol car prowls my street like a predator looking for its next meal. The mechanical beast creeps toward my house, signals a right turn, pulls into my driveway.
literally stories 