All Stories, Humour

Sophia’s Shoes by Lisa Gaultier

Gaultier, LisaSophia only owns one pair of shoes. They’re cute, chubby heels, short enough that she can walk all day long relatively painlessly. They’re black, varnished, the kind that attract no attention whatsoever, so it would take you a while to notice. If you meet her in the summer, and you start hanging out, say you take her on a date to the beach, you might notice then, because you’re wearing flip flops (which isn’t a great idea on a first date, your toes aren’t that nice) and she’s stumbling in the sand, tripping, looking quite stupid. It’s alright though because she almost falls and you catch her in your arms like a princess and you both laugh and blush, you say why don’t you take off your shoes and she does, a little self-consciously. Now you feel a little less stupid about your flip flops even if they keep going flip flop. She tells you about being a vet and her scratch and sniff sticker collection, about how in college she auditioned for The Voice but didn’t get picked. By the end of the day you’ve had so much fun her shoes got lost somewhere and you didn’t realise it. You laugh it off and carry her from the beach to the Uber and from the Uber to her apartment, it’s lovely and romantic, you kiss her goodbye and you feel giddy, excited, you think about it at night, but Sophia has no shoes and she’s wondering how she’ll get to work tomorrow.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Metal Box by Tom Sheehan

It was so damn petty that not one person in the entire family really knew how or where or when the rift began. It was there just as suddenly as the January thaw, being felt, being known, but still in all somewhat unbelievable. And every one of us, to the last thinking one of us, looked to Grandfather John Templemore to perform the cure, re-forge family ties, focus attention to proper matters. Hadn’t that man accomplished, so many times, the near impossible? The wizened little man with the piercing blue eyes that could accost you or lay balm on your wounds. The white-bearded sage who reveled in poetry and masters of the language. The articulate stone mason, his trowel now put away, who knew Yeats better than the classicists. Saturday evenings, on his wide porch fronting on the town, or deep in the pocket of his kitchen, the fire at amble, he it was who took us spellbound into the magic of joy, crowding us with the language.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Writing

Week 239 – Cat’s Insistence, Hero Worshipping And Inventive Funding.

The weeks are fair flying by, it won’t be long until we’re all fossils with only a few printed pages of our stories to remind the world that we had been here.

As you can read, I’m in a happier mood than normal as I write Week 239!

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All Stories, General Fiction

When Normal Becomes Real by Harrison Kim

Everyone’s queued up in the cafe, a string line of heads, some with hats, waiting. It’s a fairly conventional straggle and Drew stands with it.  Good to have some order.  The line’s almost out the door.  Lights fall bright around him, with invisible music. Something by the Soul Twisters.  He feels a huge space above him, compared to his regular quarters. His official security man Cody stands assertive and blocks the view ahead.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Everything’s Opposite by Jake K

Everything is opposite.  That’s what I tell my therapist.  Like a snakebite, the first-aid is not to wash the wound.  You suck the venom out because whatever you swallow, your stomach kills.  Or a concussion.  People say never sleep after a concussion.   But sleep is how your brain recovers.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Fred Rippon’s Mushroom House by Tom Sheehan

“What the good Jesus!” Pete Tura yelled and disappeared, and as he said it again, his voice muffled, his mouth most likely closed by horse manure, a whole nine yards of it, the bottom of the collection box hanging from the second floor of the Hood’s Milk Company horse barn in West Lynn let go, taking my pal with it. I last saw one arm, not waving goodbye, probably trying to keep the pitchfork from doing him damage. Possibly he had tried to throw it behind him. That innocent weapon of deadly tines was not in sight as I peered down into the mixture of black clutter and hay still settling down with a metronomic slowness you could count.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Writing

Week 238 – Writing From The Nasty, Writing With My Buddies And ‘You’re Going To Put That Where?’

Here we are at Week 238.

Yet again, the number is as interesting as listening to a conversation about moisturising. And before anyone thinks I’m being sexist, I’m not. Not being gender specific is an even sadder state of affairs.

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