Emily’s in bed one night, brooding about her manager’s warning that Emily’s too aggressive, and thinking if she was a man, she’d be called ambitious, when there’s a puff of smoke, and an elf appears.
Continue reading “Emily Follows the Elf by Ed Kratz”
Keith LaFountaine has appeared on the site a few times, but not enough. His work is sincere and thoughtful such as this fine example, Home Again. This work is multilayered and even contains a language of Keith’s (I assume) own invention. It is a masterful blend of science fiction, horror, regret and even redemption. Such a wonderful mix that is quite poignant and inspiring. We believe that readers new to it will come away feeling the same.
We have invited Keith to add his own thoughts on Home Again.
***
Now Over to Keith:
I tend to get story inspirations from imagery, and for this story the image was the opening paragraph: an astronaut in a spaceship, surrounded by his dead crew members and bubbles of blood as he cascades toward an alien planet. I didn’t know what awaited him on that planet or what would happen when he landed, and I spent a lot of time thinking about that question before landing on the final scene (I also happened to be reading Stephen King’s “Revival” at the time, which likely contributed). But mostly, I was interested in David’s life. What led him to that point? How did he end up in that spaceship? And what is he thinking about as he stares down his mortality? Whether David actually transcends time and Space, or whether it’s simply revery, I’ll leave that to readers to decide. For me, what’s important is David’s decision to turn that car around.
Long ago, in the American midwest, a woman shot her husband of twenty some odd (and some even) years to death because he would not turn down the “goddam” TV.
There are three cliches we should examine to come to an objective opinion about this situation.
Continue reading “Week 537: Making A.I. Cry”
It started on Facebook, a notice from a neighborhood dog fanciers’ page about somebody dousing a piece of steak with anti-freeze and tossing it over a fence to an unsuspecting dog, which ate the meat and died. (Apparently these attacks have been happening for quite a while now, and they believe it is the same man.) Then it was taken up by the neighborhood listserv, the modern-day call-tree, and further warnings about this criminal – described as a bald white man in his sixties – prompted an outpouring of fear and outrage. (He appears to be targeting pitbull breeds in the Lakeview area of Potawatomi Rapids.) A vigilante call went out; posters went up on phone polls; you heard nervous chatter in the grocery. You could practically hear the bugle summoning us to action. (Let’s work together and catch this guy so no more of our neighborhood pets have to suffer from his horrible acts. PLEASE SHARE & SPREAD THE WORD!!!)
Continue reading “Bald White Man in His Sixties by J C Rammelkamp”
White clapboards and wooden slats nailed across double windows peek through a veil of house-high ferns, maples, and elms. Leaves caress the places where shutters may once have been. Along the front in red and white reads a sign: Private Property No Trespassing. A vacant driveway sits to the south, marked off by a heavy chain, its endpoints hidden by foliage.
Continue reading “The Persistence of Ruins by Barbara Krasner”
“No one’s going to be looking,” he snapped.
He heard her sigh but didn’t turn to look. After a moment, the sound of her struggling up the embankment and the crashing of undergrowth came to him as she made her way into the bushes that covered the upper slopes.
Continue reading “Breakdown by Matthew Roy Davey”
I’m Angola Togo, a journalist. Recently, I listed influential people I would love to interview to better understand our history and the human condition.
This list included Queen Zenobia of Palmyra, Hammurabi, Hannibal, Budda, Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Mahatma Gandhi, The Dalai Lama, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Jr., Muhammad Ali, Paul Roberson, Langston Hughes, Albert Einstein, Zora Neale Hurston, Jackie Robinson, James Baldwin, Nina Simon, Octavia Butler, Jimmy Carter, and Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Continue reading “Angola Togo Conversations with Samuel Little and Jim Jones by Frederick K Foote”
Snow White had had a hard day. Her spirits needed a lift, so she decided to break a rule of a lifetime and sample some of her own product. Although her real name was Pearl, she had adopted the nickname her suppliers had given her, “Snow”, because she was the major distributor of cocaine on the west coast.
Continue reading “Snow White Meets Little Red Riding Hood by Tony Dawson”
Prologue
Hello. The target audience for this humanly-written, essayistic mind, heart and soul exploration is: poets; creative writers; writers; artists and “creatives” of all stripes; spiritual people; people interested in history, and the future; anyone interested in any or all of the above.
If you can’t jive with that, this writing isn’t for you.
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever: Fame; or The Queen of Crucifixion by Dale Williams Barrigar”
Well, hello there folks!
Hope you are all well and I am delighted to welcome you to Week 536!
I know that I have prattled on about snow-flakes and the enraged and the PeeSeee Brigade and I decided to look at it with some positivity.
…I couldn’t think of any but I did consider this.
Continue reading “Week 536 -Where Has All The Sense Gone? Did They Ever Have Any? And Don’t Cheat!”
literally stories 