Tag: kindness

All Stories, General Fiction

Get Yourself a Hotplate, Pal by Daniel Crépault

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Cedric stepped down from the van and squinted toward the storefront. The icy wind roared through the low buildings of the industrial park, passing through his threadbare overcoat and making his skin ache. Reaching back into the vehicle’s dank warmth, he rolled up a small sleeping bag and stuffed it into the footwell along with the small camping stove. He carefully locked the door and walked across the snowy parking lot toward Rick’s Repair Shop, a small red and yellow building behind Main Street.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Just Tired by Wayne Exton

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The port had the kind of heat that clung. It didn’t shine so much as settle — in the pavement cracks, the seams of café terraces, the folds of collars, behind the knees.

The air quivered above the cobbles like it was trying to rise but couldn’t find the strength.

From inside the arcade, David watched the light outside bleach everything to the same soft-edged white. Sunhats. Pigeons. The bone-pale wall of the farmacia.

The smell was a mix of sugar, oil, and the sea — sweet one second, briny the next. Somewhere nearby, a slushie machine whirred like it was dying slowly.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Helen’s Kitchen, 3:30 a.m. by Brian Clark

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Returning from the bathroom for the second time that night, her eyes heavy with sleep, Helen squinted down the dark hallway at the faint white glow coming from the kitchen.

Did I forget to turn off the light? she wondered.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Lonely Ghosts.by Rebecca Disley 

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Syd walked along the narrow path of flattened grass between the gravestones just like he always did. On his walk home from work, on his way to the shops, on lonely days couped up at home watching the rain pour down his window panes he came to the graveyard. He walked through the melancholy bluebells that lined its edges, past balloons tied to pristine headstones and sad teddies left in the middle of graves to keep the dead company until he got to Liam. To the black marble with his date of birth and death, the little line etched across the bottom of it that was meant to sum up his whole life. Who he was. What he was. But it couldn’t, it was too small. Too dull. It blended in with all the other messages on all the other graves but nothing about Liam had ever blended in.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Aussie Girls by Kirk Alex

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(story excerpt from Blood, Sweat & Chump Change ––
Taxi Tales & Vignettes by the author)

I’m first up on the taxi stand at the Beverly Center, after waiting for close to an hour and a half. Two Aussie girls climb in the backseat. One is blond, the other a particularly thin brunette with pocked cheeks. They want to go to Melrose.

“The Bank of America on the corner,” they tell me.

Melrose is a long street, goes for miles. I need a cross street. They can’t think of it, but explain the bank is “by the shops on Melrose.” Not much help really, but feel we’ll be able to find it.

I get the meter going and pull off the stand. Turning left on La Cienega, I take them north. When we reach Melrose Avenue I make a right. I find out that the blond has lost her wallet at the B of A “by the bus stop,” and this is why they are having me take them there. They wonder what the fare will be. I quote them between five and six dollars.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Preach by Michael Henson

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A young man sat on a darkened stoop with a small child in his arms. There was lamplight at the head of the street and lamplight at the end, but the stoop where the young man sat was at the middle of the block. Only a bit of the light stretched down to where he watched with the child.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Tin Folk by Lauren McGarrity

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“And then she invited him over for lunch!  Her man’s not dead a year and she’s already at that bowls club on the prowl.”   The old woman’s bonnet bounced up and down as she spoke.  The rain continued to pound the pavement as she and her friend passed.  Sam listened to her story, smiling a little.  If they hadn’t been walking right in front of him he might have thought that they were speaking to each other from across the road, their voices were that loud.  He wondered if they realised how loud they were, if they were both hard of hearing or just assumed the other was because of their age.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Merry Christmas Charleston CLAWS by Leila Allison

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You can touch Shax, but only by “appointment.” First you have to establish eye contact with the old tom and at the same time make a “scratchies” gesture with your index finger. If you correctly spy permission in his imperious gold eyes, then, and only then, may you apply a “scratchie” to the surprisingly short distance between his ears. Any failure to comply with this procedure will result in a personal math system based on the number nine.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Too Much Asia to Erase by Tom Sheehan

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Sleep in any odd alley came piecemeal to Chris Banntry (and never luck, he would add, if anything else.) He called it bonesleep or curbsleep, or a number of other things, just as long as minutes of it were sometimes accompanied by a kind darkness. He liked the minutes where his bones could soften for the merest of moments and his mind go blank and his stomach cease its horrible arguments, and the insects, the ants and other crawling enemies, might take a night off from arduous labors. The darkness, inevitably, could bring enemies of all sorts with it, or the strangest of friends.

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