Tag: life

All Stories, General Fiction

Famine Fingers by Nick Sweeney

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A guy I know had the telly on one evening, wasn’t taking much notice of it, and then one of those telly chefs came on. That made this guy get out of his chair and kick fuck out of the thing. He’s a happier man now, so everybody says. In fact, I don’t know him, but I think I believe it because telly chefs, they have to be a sort of conspiracy to piss people off, isn’t it, a sort of programmers’ revenge on the people who put them where they are. Think about it this way: you dream of a life in television, want to make your mark on the spirit of the age, and they make you set up a programme featuring a telly chef?

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction, Writing

Four Bars by Hugh Cron – Adult Content

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There was always a queue to get in, too many drinks in an easy pub before hand and you were in trouble. You had twenty stairs to practise your date of birth. Even at the bottom of them you could hear ‘You Spin Me Right Round.’

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All Stories, General Fiction

Posterior Rugae by Paul Strong

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The whole thing about bum cracks and manual workers is derided only by people who don’t work hard, physically, and by younger people, thinner people. Alec didn’t care what people thought, what stuff looked like, what was falling apart or falling down as long as it did the job. It’s as much as he could do to pick himself up after bending down to fiddle with something. He picked up, pulled up what he could, when he could. He was at the stage where he had to prioritise physical effort in a very task specific way. After hours, years of hard labour, his time was spent just getting done, anything else was superfluous. It wasn’t giving up, it was getting by. Continue reading “Posterior Rugae by Paul Strong” →

All Stories, General Fiction

The Afternoon Walk by Rachel Moffat

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There is a familiar quiet across the gardens, the usual character of a Sunday afternoon in autumn. Visitors are thinly scattered across the grounds, the tea room and the house. There is no guided tour of the house at this time of year; people wander round in twos and threes. They speak in low voices to each other so that they are nearly muffled by the sounds of their own footfalls. Their shoes knock slowly on the floorboards and receive creaking replies.

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All Stories, Horror

The Last Gift by Simon McHardy

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‘Turn off the light, Susan.’ It is early morning and the cold has crept into the room through an open window. Susan doesn’t reply and I watch the plumes of her breath as she sighs gently and turns the page of her book. I put my hand lightly on her arm, ‘You must be exhausted, you’ve been reading all night.’ She glances in my direction, a hint of a smile flickers across her face which then twists in confusion. Her mouth gapes and her eyes begin to well with tears that drip on to the book’s white pages.

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All Stories, General Fiction

A Literary Evening by Steve O’Connor

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On Friday night, as usual, Mike Duchamps appeared at the back door with a few typed pages rolled up in one hand and a six pack dangling from the other. “I told you I have plenty of beer,” I said.

“Come on, Stan. I never arrive empty-handed,” he shot back, which was true. Mike is a fiction writer from Pawtucketville, which is a section of Lowell named after the Pawtucket Indians, who lived here for millennia and are no more. I live in the Highlands, which is another section of the city, and not a part of Scotland. I’m Mike’s only close friend who reads a lot, and so the only one whose opinion of his craft he values. He’s been reading me his stuff over beers on Friday nights for years. In return, he never comes empty-handed.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Nor Help For Pain by Leila Allison

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Some see the aging face as an ongoing story; others see it as a palimpsest from which the original pretty story has been scraped and is continuously replaced by increasingly derivative tales culled from the same source. Here, I find myself thinking Hamlet compared to Hamlet Versus Predator: To Bleed or Not to Bleed.  Sadly, as you may plainly see, no metaphor holds up after you have looked at it long enough.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Perroni’s by Adam Kluger

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Word of Bisbee’s Dad’s funeral got passed around through friends via emails.

Good ol’ Bisbee.

Stanley Schlumperdink thought to himself of the times that he and the Diabolical Bis would hit on chicks together at Trader Vic’s at The Plaza in High School. Bisbee preferred the Tiki Puka Puka to the Spider Bowls. Either way. The girls back then had candy flavored pussies and a real love of high fashion.

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All Stories, Romance

Fly Love by Ateret Haselkorn

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Olivia and her boyfriend broke up on a Sunday morning.  It wasn’t a surprise, really.  Olivia had offered her boyfriend an amicable break up twice before by yelling, “Do you just want to split up?” two times.  Although he had asked to stay together then, he had behaved otherwise by disappearing for hours and returning drunk without any explanation.  As a last attempt at repair, Olivia had called his parents for help.  His father had assured her that he would force his “idiot son” to propose if he only could.

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