Emmet Emafo started his day running. Broken branches and shredded herbs told the story of the hail storm that woke him during the night. A thin mist still fell. A canvas of fall leaves swayed in trees. He became one with the morning light and shadow. The slap of his footfalls on the wet cement comforted him.
Continue reading “The Executor by Barb Lundy”
Maisie wished Goodwill had an anonymous nighttime drop-off. She didn’t want to be judged for her donations or the frequency with which she gave them. In all things, Maisie preferred to be anonymous. She didn’t like to be seen. She was 262lbs and 5’2″. Most of her life, Maisie was petite, her adolescent frame offered her two options: one to keep shopping in the children’s department or two to find a good tailor. Thankfully, her grandma could sew. Grandma Betty made a lot of Maisie’s clothes. Eventually, Maisie hit 100 lbs. Now, the only thing she was lacking was much in the way of boobs. Push-up bras now had something, a little something, to work with even if the ballooned bras were problematic with spontaneous combustion while dancing or laughing.
Continue reading “Food Cowboy by Leah Sackett”
“—As you know, the program uses a combination of advanced geometry and quantum computing to respond quickly to market shifts and improve the firm’s pricing of derivatives. It’s also been enormously helpful in the area of risk analysis—”
Sitting at his desk, listening to the young programmer speak, Matt shook his head slowly. As usual, he had no idea what the lanky quant was trying to tell him.
Is it worth your lives? his father had asked him – repeatedly. Your lives? A bullet for a few billion leaves?
Well, he’d never understood it.
No, that’s not fair; he understood it perfectly well. That’s precisely why he feared.
He’d never come out to the settlement. Laisa asked, with deliberate frequency, why he never visited.
Because he’s afraid, Felipe explained.
The fork in the display case glinted under the lights. It rested on a shiny black plastic podium, and impaled on its tines was what appeared to be a human finger. He was pleased with the finger and gave a grunt of satisfaction. It was his own finger, pinkie of the left hand, plaster cast thereof. Title of work: give/take/eat. Listed in the catalogue as item no. 17, price £6,000.
She hated her job. All day she read and reworked words that didn’t satisfy, words dry, tasteless, and underripe — words like rectifier and microprocessor and power semiconductor. Their heaviness left paste in her mouth.
Continue reading “The Literal Gourmand — A Fable by Daun Daemon”
On the horizon, out of the dust of the Harvest Road, comes a small trotting tribe of misfits.
Her fingers dripped with sticky syrup. A warm breeze blew in from her kitchen windows and she closed her eyes for a moment. One perfect moment. Opening her eyes, she sucked one finger after another, savoring the tart sweetness, then dipped one finger in the pot for one more taste. The plum jam was perfect, as she knew it would be.
Joy’s eyes were stinging from the stench of urine. She was hoping it was from her mother’s three tiny dogs, but suspected the mutts weren’t the only ones who’d been incontinent.
Three of us for dozens of years were tight as a fist. No one could break us up, and a few had tried that on a few futile occasions, even when we gentlemen were fly fishing on one or more of the local streams, dawn afloat, May alive after a harsh winter and a tough early spring. Patterns were set betwixt us, like specialties of the house or garage or personal workshop, toil and turn at obstacles and unfinished tasks were before us who by each one’s choice in life’s work had brought the gifts of ideas and applicable and talented hands to extend those gifts. For each one of us possessed odd and different talents in electrical, mechanical and brute strength applications and peculiar other interests like coin and stamp collecting, scrap book organization and minimal, but touching artwork by a loving touch, family interest passed down from a parent or an older sibling.
literally stories 