Tag: free reading

All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Ben by Hugh Cron – Warning – Adult Content.

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Before Ben knew it he was sixty.

He wasn’t sure if that bothered him but it was now forty one years.

He stayed in what he called his ‘But and Ben’. He loved the old bed that pulled down from the wall. Ben reckoned that there was a cure for cancer within it’s mattress but he didn’t care that there might have also been a hundred different types of lurgey living within the confines of decades of dead skin and bodily fluids. It was quite comfortable.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Gone by Robert Steward

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The first place I search for Mum is Sainsbury’s. It’s the first shop that pops into my head. Maybe she needs ingredients for a cake or something. Though the last one she baked stirs up images of a smouldering mount Vesuvius. She forgot the eggs. I whip through the supermarket to the beep of the checkouts, panning every aisle, even the frozen food section. But she’s not there.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Quick Death of a Lottery Foe by Tom Sheehan

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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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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns: Walk on By by Jane Houghton

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Even the stars will go out, one by one, the great and the small, at entropy all will be done. And such is the case with Margot, a small star in the show business sky, yet a first magnitude sun in Jane Houghton’s Walk on By. This is a fine example of parallel writing. The current story nurtures the backstory and both resolve together in a bittersweet, even uplifting conclusion.

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Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 385 – Only Waiters Appreciate, If You Have Nothing To Write…Don’t And The Birds Will Nest Well This Year In London.

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All throughout my life I have been able to give tips, whether they were wanted or not!

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Mother Dog by Antony Osgood – Content warning. This story has content that some readers may find upsetting.

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People on honeymoon visit a different time zone and endure a surfeit of shared hours. We learn the language of negotiation when volunteering to lose a little of ourselves. Both of us feel change to be obligatory, though we can never quite express who we might become; we know we will be less ourselves. Adding to our transformation, impending parenthood: the great world tilts.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Horror

Lives End Where Two Roads Meet by Enyi Nnabuihe

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There were naked children rolling tyres in the rain on this particular Thursday the masquerades came. About seventeen of them; their wet, charcoaled skins, and little, rubbery limbs, emitting joy, radiating hope. There were mothers breastfeeding children in front of their shops; talking and selling, chatting, laughing and howling with the winds that accompanied the rains. There were dogs, goats and cats, roaming, resplendently, around the muddy streets, feeling at home.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Clovis Clayton Holiday by Frederick K Foote

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My mother told me, “Clovis Clayton Holiday, you gonna be the death of me with the way you do the things you do.”

My father instructed me, “Clovis, son, sometimes you have to go along to get along, you understand?”

My older sister, Nora, scolded me, “Clo, Negro, you can’t just go and do anything you want to do. You got to follow the rules.”

Nelda, my younger sister, declared, “Clo, You, too weird to be my brother. I disown your Black ass.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Abyss by Emil Birchman

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Yumi Suzuki decided she’d throw herself in front of a train on a warm, sunny day. She came to this conclusion sitting in her apartment, watching the weather forecast for the next week. It rained for the last five days, and if the forecast was correct – she’d see the sun tomorrow.

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