Alicia snapped awake. There was a fine silk cobweb covering her face. It felt as if she was suffocating. She reached out, clawing at her face, scratching off the surface texture. She was down to the scars when the blood started to flow.
Tag: free reading
Fear by Hugh Cron
He accepted the night. He always had. The street people never caused him any fear. It was a case of if he didn’t bother them, they wouldn’t bother him. The unapproachable demeanour which he carried also helped.
Maximum by Andy Carroll
– I’d get yer ginger man from Billions on the tv on a boat, take him out there to Mutton Island and let him do some inside-trading on me.
The other two shrieked with laughter. It was the three cleaners’ second smoke break since lunch.
Satan’s Monologue by Jeff Barker
It’s all greed, really. People want what they don’t have, what they think they can’t have, what other people have told them they can’t have, because they themselves think they can’t have it, and so on. Do you follow? Do you get it? No you don’t. If you got it I could have stayed in Paradise instead of spending all of this wasted time on Earth.
Oh, the Wounds He Wore, Death His Neighbor (Jimmy the Meterman) by Tom Sheehan
Small-eyed, small-eared, a mole perched like an ace of spades on one eyelid, a mastoid-depressed void behind one of those ears, pale of complexion, shoulders it seemed worn down by weights almost too ponderous for life, Jimmy Griffith was the essence of obscurity as he leaned on the bar of the Vets Club. All members knew Jimmy by name and by sight, but few had ever heard him say much more than a good morning or a goodnight, or “I’ll have my second beer now, Al,” or “Brownie,” if Brownie Latefox was on duty. This was the two-a-day ritual at the end of walking his route about town, measuring water consumption, reading the meters down in fieldstone cellars or the utility rooms of newer bungalows. Read the meters, jot the numbers, cheat a bit for a friendly face, or go a step further, like disconnecting a meter for six months at a time, not a soul at the water department or in the confines of Town Hall ever the wiser. Nobody knew how happy Jimmy was to have the job, nobody in God’s creation. Or why.
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Literally Reruns – Mercy by Diane M Dickson
Leila Allison has been mining in the nether regions of the site again and this time has managed to embarrass one of the editors.
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Week 201: Graves, Literature and Almost Certainly Some Other Stuff
Almost sort of exactly 201 years ago, Jane Austen died. I must confess I haven’t read much (any) of her work despite Pride and Prejudice and Zombies being on my reading list for some time. Never being one to allow a lack of knowledge to get in the way of a good opinion however, I’m prepared to wager that her collective works didn’t contain many references to the humble kilogram.
Young Jane would have been almost sort of exactly 18 when the French said pas plus to the grain related measurements of the time and invented the kilogram. She would have been far too busy working on her short novel Lady Susan to bother with such new-fangled frippery. She no doubt noted however that the initial name for this kilogram was a grave and as such the literary seed for her zombie based works was sown.
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Peculiar Folk by Frederick K Foote
Odd, peculiar, freakish people roll into my life as regular as the tides, but with the most unexpected, extraordinary, and bizarre results.
s-Perfect by Tris Matthews
After a short rest, when she thought he might fall asleep, Amy reached round to slap her sweaty lump of husband on the back.
“Get off now.”
With a groan, Brad peeled his slick torso from hers, rolled off and collapsed, naked and vulnerable. Their mixed sweat chilled the front of Amy’s torso, but she didn’t have time to shower.
He Promised Her An Ocean by Miriam Burke
Taddeo gets up with the sun; he prides himself on not being one of those Brazilians who think every day should be carnaval. He looks out his twelfth floor window at glass and concrete towers that are home to people from all countries of the world, people who live peacefully together. He’s proud of his adopted city.
