Tag: life

All Stories, Humour

From the Mouth of Peter Dowd by Fred Vogel

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Man: Hello. I’m Peter. You are a lovely lady.
The lovely lady seated across from Peter: Well, thank you, Peter. I’m Georgia.
Peter: You are too pretty to be a state.
A courtesy smile.
Peter: You have perfect teeth.
Georgia: I brush between meals.
Peter: Good concept.
Georgia: You should try it.
Peter: I believe I will.
Georgia: Tell me, Peter, why are you here?
Peter (after a brief moment of reflection): I believe religion to be an archaic concept that caters to the insecurities of fragile, ignorant people. And you?
Georgia: Goodbye Peter.
Peter: Goodbye Georgia. Continue reading “From the Mouth of Peter Dowd by Fred Vogel” →

All Stories, General Fiction

The Inescapable Touch of Sunset By Leila Allison

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The atavistic avatar dropped from space:

“I did it only to see the look on our face.”

1

On his way across the short overpass that unofficially connects Corson Street to Torqwamni Hill, Holly glances down at a small house below. It’s an ugly little fist-like rental that had gone up during the Second World War—as had countless others of its kind in Charleston. Like the caw of a crow or a bit of dandelion fluff getting stuck to your cheek, this house exists only in the moment you share with it. Yet nearly thirty years gone by, the same house had once unclenched and gave Holly a touch of honesty; thus it had it had earned in his mind its own small history.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Hermit of Breakheart Woods by Tom Sheehan

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Over millions of years ago Breakheart Woods, between Saugus and Wakefield in Massachusetts, had been bookmarked by boulders and blow-offs and earthly cataclysm, and to this day, somewhere in its innards from those first struggles of granite and earth fire, from violent fractures and upheavals to be known again only at the end of it all, was a cave, a cave as dark as a heart, a cave that once, I believed, pulsed with a heart. Now we were searching for that cave, in earnest.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Watan By Matthew Richardson

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Ah sir, you come upon me just as I am closing for the night. No no, it is not a problem to remain open whilst you make your purchase. Come in, I insist! I would not have you come out all this way on a night such as this and leave empty handed. Commutes are soulless enough endeavours, without being denied sustenance for the sake of an old man closing his establishment five minutes early.

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All Stories, Romance

Meeting of Minds by Raymond Hopkins

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People have asked just how it was that Sandra and me got together in the first place. I mean, it seems a bit unlikely, if you know what I mean. After all, there’s Sandra, small, educated, a right stunner that makes men choke on their beers at first sight, a snappy dresser that causes men’s eyes to wander rapidly southwards in the hope of even better stuff below, and a helpless looking nature which she uses to good effect when she wants somebody to do something for her. Not that she needs it, as she is quite capable of looking after herself whenever there is nobody else around.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Forgotten Tomorrows by Wylie Strout

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I wondered where the wonder went.  Another bottle of wine, another moment gone, carelessly misplaced along with the forgotten tomorrows.  I picked at the bandage above my eye.

I thought of the millions of self-help books I had read.

“Allow yourself to go to a different place, a better place, in times of difficulties.”

“Embrace your inner child.”

“Breathe.”

“Be kind to yourself.”

“Stay positive.”

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Where the Air Tastes Like Copper by Lee Conrad

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Roscoe Griffin, sheltered by the corner of the three story windowless building, waited for the procession of cars to begin drifting into the parking lot. Morning was just breaking and the autumn sun converted the chemical fumes coming from the stacks on top of the building into a mosaic of colors. Colorful though the fumes were, they held a deadly future. The smell, as the fumes drifted down, made Roscoe’s already nauseated stomach even worse.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Back Side of Sight by Tom Sheehan

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In the bedroom, upstairs, front corner, blind amid the toss of linens he had known intimately for seven long years, in touch with passing traffic and summer conversations when the windows were open, Jack Derrick lay in the middle of sound, in the middle of darkness. His left leg, or most of it, set upon by diabetes and the perfection of the surgeon, was elsewhere; his right hand was stained by nicotine, the index finger and close companion yellowed as shoe leather, and those fingernails bore fragments of that same deep stain. Gray, thin hair, most of it about his ears except for one thatch above his forehead as if an odd bird, at length, would roost there, drooped like fallen stalk. The stubble of his beard sprouted as off-white as an old field of corn waiting the last reaper.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Ghosts by Terry Sanville

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Nathan Bellamy hunched over a cardboard box on the floor of his bedroom closet. He sorted through a stack of yellowed papers: insurance policies for cars long sold; records of mortgage payments that Loraine filed away during their first years of marriage. They’d lived in the house on a quiet street in Pacific Grove for more than four decades. Nathan felt her spirit in every room that he’d cleaned out, even in the musty closet with its dark corners filled with old shoes and empty suitcases.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Workplace Harmony by Rebecca Field

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Eric slammed the fridge door in disgust. It had definitely gone. He’d been looking forward to that can of cherry cola all morning and somebody had taken it. It was the audacity of it that really got to him; who would be so brazen?

 Clutching his plastic clip-top box of ham sandwiches closer to him, he slunk back to his desk, eyeing up his co-workers with suspicion as he went.

Continue reading “Workplace Harmony by Rebecca Field” →