“Hello cat! Balancing your arse on the window sill again. You need to lose weight…Pot and kettle…I know!!”
What are you chirping at? Ah, I see, the birds, how ironic!” Someone should have heard that, it was mildly amusing.
“You don’t need to puff up you idiot, I see him. What do you think? Breakdown or directions?”
Continue reading “To Kill John Morgan by Hugh Cron – Adult Content”
“Good Morning Mr. Schmertz. This is Dawn with Orlando Marketing and Tourism to let you know you’ve just won an all-expenses paid discount opportunity to visit one of our luxury resorts in the Greater Orlando Area…let me axe you …would you be interested in speaking with one of our senior sales agents…”
“What time is it?”
“It’s 6:15am Eastern on this beautiful Tuesday morning…how are you doing today sir?”
“Go fuck yourself and never call here again.”
For some time now the literary world has been speculating upon the delay between Sidney Shield’s 14th Gothic novel and the appearance of his long overdue 15th. The reasons being bandied about are quite preposterous, especially the more macabre ones, though Mr. Shield is not displeased by the latter. As personal secretary to the author, I have been authorized to give an explanation on his behalf. I hasten to add that the words used are my own.
Crazy Ed Mahoney went out the back door on Monday to urinate in his garden. He believed, incorrectly, that he was saving on his water bill. His neighbors had given up on changing his ways. After seeing him in the act a few times, they learned not to look in the direction of his backyard at 7am, 1pm and 4pm when Ed would urinate like clockwork. Whatever else was wrong with Ed, he had an excellent prostate.
It was my wife, Esme, who suggested we get a pet for our children. “It will teach them responsibility,” she said.
“Sounds good,” I replied. However, I was not actually paying attention when she brought up the subject because I was going over my notes for a lecture on string theory. So, it came as a complete surprise when Esme and the twins arrived home from the pet store with a ferret.
Continue reading “Quantum Hamsters and Other Pet Anomalies by Hermine Robinson”
Did you ever wonder what it would be like to be a newt? To reside peaceably in an aquarium, rising every so often for a gulp of air, catching a worm in your thin amphibious mouth and being generally content? I often think about that. This is about a time when I thought about it a lot. It was the summer when I worked as a student intern at a senior center near Brighton Beach. I was pursuing a social work degree at Hunter College, and sharing an apartment in downtown Brooklyn with two other graduate students. It was a lonely time for me, and I kept several spotted newts in a terrarium for company, and a five disc CD player that I had on continuously when I was home to ward off the isolating silence.
Hi folks, a load of nonsense before I get to a tip that I think most of us need reminding of (and I REALLY have to include myself in this!)
I was just thinking on some of the comments that I have read from my fellow Editors over the last week and one was the word ‘Underwhelmed’… Don’t panic.. .It wasn’t about a submission, honestly, it wasn’t. I don’t lie. I haven’t got the memory, intelligence or energy but I thought on this word. I am underwhelmed by so many things. Space travel, I don’t give a monkeys! Confirming that time ripples; well whatever a monkey doesn’t give, that’s my thoughts on that! An up-to-date phone… Ditto… In fact any phone! I haven’t got one. I hate them. Gwen once asked me if I wouldn’t feel guilty if someone had died and I hadn’t a phone? My answer was quite simple; ‘Answering the phone wouldn’t have helped.’ I am underwhelmed about the attributes (another word I read this week) of a phone! Argue all you want! Do we really need a camera, the ability to turn on the heating or being able to go online to order a curry with a thing that we could have used to call and ordered a curry with? I am forty nine in a few months and I have gotten here without a phone so as far as I am concerned, Nokia, Samsung, IPhone and Sony are about as useful to me as male make-up. I wonder about that also! It is beyond me. Live and let live is what I say, as long as I don’t have to moisturise before I do it. That brings me to another word I heard this week and that was ‘Dinosaur.’ And again before anyone starts to think back to what they have called me, it was me who called myself that! You’ll all probably agree, especially after reading these first few paragraphs that my self-analysis is pretty close.
Now back to ‘underwhelmed’ – (My links are getting worse! I think I will try to get a job as a local DJ) George Martin, who we were all sad to learn of his passing, took on a group that underwhelmed every other producer and they were ‘The Beatles’… I felt I had to explain that ‘just in case’ we have any Justin Bieber fans as readers. I don’t think so, as much as my understanding is, they will all be on their phones and putting on their make-up. Don’t know what the girls will be doing! (I know – You saw that coming a mile away!) Anyway, he saw something and heard something that he knew was special and that is a huge talent in itself. Marilyn Monroe was getting nowhere until a photographer suggested that she change her hair colour. Now the point of all this is that it is other people who see beyond our own ideas. Sometimes we go down the wrong road. We are so blinkered by our understanding of a story that we don’t consider how it comes across to the reader. Everyone who has picked up a pen will have had this problem at one time.
So – tip for today – try to separate your knowledge of your story when reading it back. Look at it and question if it is the finished article. If not, mould like Martin or at the very least, change your hair colour!
Now to this weeks stories! We had a strangeness about them all. So all good then!!!
On Monday we had Jonathan Payne with his story Surrounded. This was a strange tale that makes you think about the self.
Our fellow editor Nik had his story published on Tuesday. The Water’s Edge is an atmospheric, unsettling and beautiful piece of writing.
Wednesday had us publishing another multi-contributer. The talented Mr Fred Foote gave us a story that had his Author truly living his plot.
Another old friend and supporter of the site is James McEwan. On Thursday he showed how good weird can be with his tale Table By The Window.
And Friday, a story that touches on a horror that many live with, Bruce Costello’s thought provoking One Dick, Two Sheryls.
There is so much emotion and question throughout all these superb stories. They have been a joy to read. And unlike all you poor souls who are reading this, we have not been ‘underwhelmed’ by any of them! (Ayr’s West Sound Radio Station is getting ma CV!!)
Hugh
Here begins the third (official) tale of the accumulated adventures of Stormcrow.
I guarantee* that by reading Any Crow In A Storm first you will find this episode 19.73%** funnier. Episode 2 was rubbish. Just ask the Literally Stories editors. Go on, I dare you***
* not an actual guarantee.
** not an actual accurate number.
*** an actual dare.
Either way, in this episode we find our halfling-hating legend so full of his own splendour that he can’t even be bothered to turn up until the last couple of paragraphs…
–
“Will he be long d’ya reckon?”
“How the bloody hell should I know?” The large-headed swarthy guard rolled his eyes and snorted only to have the effect ruined by a migrant rope of snot who, in excitement and glee at having found a hitherto unknown trap door, smacked straight into the guard’s epiglottis. Mucusy dreams of the bright lights of throat town were shattered in the hawk and spit moments that followed, and as he lay dying, drying, against the stump of an ancient oak the plucky little gobbet found solace in the fact that he had, at the very least, had a go.
Victor sat on his bed. He looked out of his first-floor pod-flat bedroom window at the dual carriageway that was no longer a dual carriageway – not strictly speaking.
Electro-ped-cycles zipped. Freight trams glided. Electro-buses moved little by little, final phase commercial time drawing to a close – a fizz, a drone and a hum of noise.
I’ve sat here too long, Victor said to himself; just watching it move. I ought to get up.
The two rather dishevelled men walked up the street. They weren’t very big, they weren’t very handsome. They certainly weren’t very clever. Normally fate would decide that due to these short-comings they would have been given very interesting characters or gracious manners. But no! Not these two, they were both arseholes.
Continue reading “Blood And Bigotry by Hugh Cron – Adult Content”
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