My eyes are either shut or simply not working.
Hoping for the former I open my eyes, face down on the floor, my vision consisting of vague shapes and rough colours. Lifting my head takes muster, my brain reluctant to keep up with the images it receives. Everything shimmers like an old video recording. Shapes flicker but never settle, as though I am travelling through time without any way of stopping.
The psychiatric community doesn’t have a name for my problem. Please believe me when I say I’ve looked. Medical journals (both antiquated and current), multiple expert opinions—I even went so far as obtaining and translating some of Kraepelin’s unpublished case reports from the turn of the century—it all leads nowhere. The closest I’ve come is Morgellons syndrome, but that isn’t right. The reality of my condition is much worse than any disease of the mind.
Jim sat in the living room with his gun on the coffee table staring at the wall. He had just locked her in his bedroom and was contemplating his next move.
A gust of wind blew around the outside of the house as Mike pried the bottle cap off his fourth beer with his teeth. It was a trick one of his old classmates had taught him—a trick he used to use to impress women in bars, but now, domesticated, he only used when he couldn’t find the bottle opener.
Continue reading “You’ll Let the Storm In by Nicholas Siegel”
Her legs began to go numb as they tingled from her weight. She was on her knees again, scrubbing. Always scrubbing. The chill of the linoleum floor made goosebumps run over her thighs under her pants.
This home didn’t belong to her. She wouldn’t enjoy the benefits of her labors. Mrs. McCormick, or Mrs. Glenn, or Mrs. Whomever Ella worked for that day would come home after she left. All part of the job, you show up, clean, and leave.
The first time I heard the cry of the banshee was three days before the full moon. My blood ran cold because I knew exactly what it meant. In my youth, my grandmother entertained us with fantastic fairytales and spooky stories. The haunting tale of the banshee had been one of my favorites, so when I heard the strange keening, I immediately recalled the legend. The story about a witch who announced the imminent death of a loved one was common throughout Ireland. There was even a poem that children sometimes chanted in the schoolyard, often around Halloween:
It’s 2:30 am and Charlotte and I are wide awake holding hands in our new bed in our new house. This is our third sleepless night in our new home in the West Virginia wilderness. It’s the howling, hooting, chirping, scraping, squealing night noises that keep us from sleeping. There’s a sudden scraping sound on the roof and the sounds of a cavalcade of creatures marching above our heads.
Continue reading “Elves by Frederick K Foote (contains sexual content)”
His blood reaches out to me across the polished flagstones, pooling in luxuriance half a centimetre from the toes of my new Belle Vivier pumps, as if about to kiss them. A perfect match for their patent sheen, the colour of a good Burgundy too, what a waste.
“Excuse me–” a man in a dark suit touches my arm and I step back.
“Do you know this person?” asks the suit. There is a wire leading to his ear. A woman behind him screams, dropping her chic carrier bag.
I heard my orchids screaming last night. They were angry I did not kiss them and spit blood on their pistils. My body was numb from the combination of red wine and rum. The day had been full of anxiety, so I made the decision to exhaust myself with harmful liquid.
“My father, Franz Josef Schennach, was a gendarme, Hauptmann, in Tirol. After the Nazi took over, he had to prove that he was Arian. He could not prove this,” Anna Stenson said. She looked across the room from her chair.
“Brown eyes go to Africa… They taunted me. At school. Only the blue eyes would stay in Europe, if Hitler won. I was hoping he would not,” she said adjusting the hem of her skirt.
Continue reading “Swords Hanging on the Walls by Richard Mark Glover”
literally stories 