Tag: fraud

All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Louis Lovelace and the Salvation Economy by Zachary Arama

literallystories2014

September 8th

The idea came to Louis Lovelace after a phone call informing him of the end of the world.

He groped for an excuse to end the call, but his mind was foggy from the smoldering joint in the ashtray. He’d been burning through the severance from his last job for almost five months now, and the truth was he had nothing better to do than listen.

“Louis, it’s Sheldon. We went to college together, remember?” the hopeful voice on the other end of the line said.

“I know this seems strange, but it’s urgent.”

Louis remembered Sheldon as a devoutly religious student who shared his notes whenever Louis was too hungover to take his own. They had hardly been friends, and in the fifteen years since graduation, Louis hadn’t thought about him once.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Quick Death of a Lottery Foe by Tom Sheehan

literallystories2014

Murder, when it comes in pairs, causes echoes. The push and pull, the cause and effect, the what and why, bounce off every surface. The sound jangles and makes intrusive inroads into daily and otherwise common sense. When one of the victims is a small account part-time drunk, bar room stentorian, an ex-jailbird, and the other is Doyle Hapgood, Harvardian, Commissioner of Police for the City of Boston, there is resonance, there is reverberation, and the black ink of headlines runs red.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Valentine’s Day Massacre by Doug Hawley

literallystories2014

Special Report To Stumptown Magazine by Elmer Jakes February 10, 20xx

I was at her bedside when Ginger Smith uttered her last words.  “Why did Ted do this?  I thought that we loved each other.”

Ginger didn’t know that Ted Hamer didn’t do it.  He had died before she had.  The real murderer of Ginger and Ted was Phil Jenks the billionaire owner of Fallpark, the famous maker of greeting cards and romance movies.

The why and how of Jenk’s crimes are mostly known, and the missing pieces can be filled in with reasonable certainty.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

A Particular Kind of Scumbag by David Henson

literallystories2014

Harold Marold was confident his new discovery was going to be big. Really big. Sure, his previous inventions hadn’t all turned out as he hoped. The periscoping contact lenses caused vertigo and motion sickness. His electro-socks to eliminate foot sweat were “shocking” — as he’d found out the hard way. And his chainsaw-equipped drone for trimming high tree limbs had its drawbacks. But his current project couldn’t miss. It was going to bring about world peace.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Comet with a Nasty Tale by Tom Sheehan

literallystories2014

typewriter

The morning, at the outset, had no promise of being ecstatic, though Professor Clifton Agnuus put the rock into his briefcase. Every time out it was about eight pounds of drama for him, at least at the start of term, and now off on a new year. A storyteller he should have been, he argued, a yarn spinner, the kind of a writer that Professor Albie Short, over in A&S, his one good buddy, drooled over, and had been doing so for almost forty years. Albie was apt to open a conversation by saying something like, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.” There was a time Albie would likely answer a telephone call the same way, or with Bartlesby the Scrivener’s opening remark, “I AM a rather elderly man,” but all that had sloughed off when he was burned by some wise-ass responses. For reasons best known by them, he and Albie liked each other. If anything, Agnuus might say Albie was the coin’s other side.

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