Tag: friendship

All Stories, Fantasy

The Toll Collector by Jack Kamm

literallystories2014

“There’s a toll for everything…the toll for happiness is often sorrow.” — James Carr

Would you opt for a different life if you had the choice?  This is the question I asked myself, a question so burning that it dampened my palms; it’s also the question I needed to ask my best friend, Charlie, because we both hated our lives—just as much as the guy who pulled up to my booth on that icy evening. Under the amber lights, his red Jaguar gleamed like a ruby. Decked out in a fancy camel-hair overcoat, he told me he was gonna jump off the bridge.

Continue reading “The Toll Collector by Jack Kamm” →
All Stories, General Fiction

The Final Meeting by Ian Forth

literallystories2014

He wasn’t looking forward to the meeting with her, which had been arranged for four o’clock. When in her presence, he felt he was under a malign spell. He would look at his feet or the ceiling, anywhere except at her face. When she was talking, the muscles in his face contorted into a sneer, over which he had no control. His replies became monosyllabic; his voice flat.

Continue reading “The Final Meeting by Ian Forth” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Hold Your Breath by Sarah Macallister

literallystories2014

Underwater light flickers and dapples the sea floor, glowing through seaweed drifting in the current. Miles of sand undulate into shadow. The goggles bite hard into Colin’s cheekbones and behind his ears, but they do not leak. Colin swims deeper, releasing bubbles as he descends.

His chest tightens but the sand is close now. He stretches his fingers out.

Continue reading “Hold Your Breath by Sarah Macallister” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Joe Harrington’s Wake by JD Clapp

literallystories2014

Darla pulled into the alley behind the bar and parked under the streetlight. Before she undid her seatbelt she sat in silence for a moment. She adjusted her rearview mirror and looked at her bloodshot eyes, the rims rubbed red from blotting tears. Over the two weeks since Joe Harrington dropped dead, Darla struggled as much with the prospect of her own future as much as her loss. The same thoughts ran over and over thumping her mind like a shoe in a dryer. I’m 64, I have no retirement savings, no real family. I need to keep working but my knees hurt all the time. How long can I keep this up? Her tiny self-chosen family had just lost their most stable member; she had lost her best friend and former lover. She took a make-up bag from her purse and went to work on her eyes.

Continue reading “Joe Harrington’s Wake by JD Clapp” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Don’t Mess with Me by Harrison Kim

literallystories2014

Seventeen-year-old Jackson hunched up tight against the school wall smoking and laughing to himself, waiting for the bus and coming out of a daydream about performing at Carnegie Hall.  He noticed how brightly the dandelions bloomed on the sides of the culvert; the birch leaves fluttered above them.  He stubbed out his cancer stick.  His friend Robert P. hustled up, hauling a guitar stained dark brown with linseed oil.

Continue reading “Don’t Mess with Me by Harrison Kim” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Frankie and the Wild Man by Marco Etheridge

literallystories2014

The wild man sat in his lawn chair and tried to ignore the small boy lurking behind the shabby travel trailer. The chair was made from aluminum tubing and woven plastic webbing. The coarse webbing sometimes pinched the back of the wild man’s thighs, but he was accustomed to this. He’d owned the chair for a very long time. The sneaking little brat, however, was a new and unwelcome annoyance.

Continue reading “Frankie and the Wild Man by Marco Etheridge” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Bobby’s Shadow by Desmond Kelly

literallystories2014

Watching the planes take off and land. It’s possible to observe them through a gap between trees. Little glimpses, a flash of light, a roar of the engine. Gone again, come again. I’ve watched so many, it puts me to sleep. It takes a while to realise those sausage tubes contain real people. Pilots and stewardesses in their perfectly tailored suits. When I turn away, the sound of traffic returns, the commotion on the street. Windows don’t close, except in monsoon season. Even then… Snakes slip between unguarded spaces. The monkeys set up a racket. The creatures lurking in the forest make their presence known. There are no trophy hunters; no men emulating Hemingway. The fish have buried themselves in the deepest deep, the wild game have found a habitat across the border more in keeping with their lifestyle. The forest will flourish until the loggers return. And then there will be mayhem.

Continue reading “Bobby’s Shadow by Desmond Kelly” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Arm Milk by Spencer Levy

literallystories2014

Tin men play their kazoos too loud. Like having an annoying ass bee trying to drill into the deep part of your ear. It’s Sunday and it’s the boardwalk. Sea spray that you’re not supposed to touch or it’ll leave a nasty pollution rash. Gregg doesn’t care, though. His arm is messed up anyhow from all the lousy skateboarding.

Gregg rides and I walk and the waves shove against the wooden thing beneath our feet. Some people call it an embankment, but that sounds too much like a place where loose-tie fathers coax children into cashing checks in exchange for thin lollipops. Gregg grazes his lousy arm against the slippery arm rail, catches some sea spray in his mouth.

Continue reading “Arm Milk by Spencer Levy” →
All Stories, General Fiction

The Lone Inheritance by Tom Sheehan

literallystories2014

Henry Searles, once an unknown character in this business, did not imagine what the insides of Ted Gentry’s house looked like because he had no idea where to begin his search for furniture, trinkets, odds and ends, lackluster fragments of Gentry’s past, lost articles in a blindly-kept closet holding piled up clues. It all appeared pointless and highly impractical, just a guy he met on the corner where the river slips under the bridge, had a drink with him at a bar, like they were old friends suddenly rejoined rather than new acquaintances, but Gentry, sort of mystically, left a note with the barkeep to deliver to Searles if anything ever happened to him, as though Doom itself had made the call.

Continue reading “The Lone Inheritance by Tom Sheehan” →