Tag: literally stories

All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

A Little Time by Dylan Martin

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 The world was so much simpler when Forever 21 was just a shitty clothing store. Nowadays, it’s nothing more than a bar off 42nd street, with a comically-large hourglass by the door filled with sand that never falls. I used to consider it nothing more than a cheap gimmick; another one of the city’s countless tourist traps. The truth is the bar was never what attracted people. All those stupid, far-from-subtle decorations aren’t what people come to stare at; we are.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Girl with the Long Dream by Tom Sheehan

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I had heard about her for a long time. She lived alone in a cave in a deep-set canyon, on a cliff looking sharply down at the edge of the prairie. She was a most beautiful Indian maiden who, I heard from several sources, had been driven from her Cherokee village. The word bandied about said she was bound in her mind to find a good man to be her husband. She would have the best of children and would be the best of mothers. For that she needed the best man she could find.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Show Off by Frederick K Foote – Contains adult language and themes.

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On a balmy day in May, Betty Brown said to a joyous Black boy jiving around on Broadway, “Walk that walk, Boy. You know you sooo fine. You know I’m gonna make you mine. It’s just a matter of time.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Road Finally Home by William R Stoddart

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It’s a circuitous route via thumb from my home in the old Borsch Belt in upstate New York to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. And when I’ve decided it was time to move on, I bummed rides through rural Southern towns trusting the unspoken agreement, the rules of the road. I made my way to the interstate — a flip of a coin, a wet finger held high in the sweet tarry air. I made a fist of my right hand, extended the thumb, and rode it all the way to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, pitching my backpacking tent near Pequea Creek.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Charlestown Calling Back by Tom Sheehan

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These days, you’re the only Townie I would know on sight as you grace our Riverside Cemetery in your own hellos, tall as all get-out, robust, time marking your way past that mere issue, and a charmer from a distance on any day of the week. I wish, among other issues and dreams, that you’d recognize me, wrap those loving arms around me, greet the passing among all these stones, upright, neat in place, fighting off the centuries one by one.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Sawbones by Edward N McConnell

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Tom Kenner sat looking out the window of a waiting room at the Columbus Orthopedic Hospital. He had been through the magazines but, dog-eared and dated, they couldn’t hold his attention. “Maybe staring out the window will make the time go more quickly,” he thought. It didn’t.

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Literally Reruns, Short Fiction

Literally Reruns: Paper Lined Tables by Rachel Sievers

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The two things that stand out for me in Rachel Sievers’ Paper Lined Tables are displacement and expectation. A hard to face big problem is usually addressed through an unrelated smaller trouble, and waiting for something is often better than getting that something. Mostly, the things most wrong in our lives are impossible to articulate without receiving negative pushback from a person associated with the woe. And dreaming of a best pal dog without accounting for how you will deal with the uptick of chewed slippers, barking and dogshit in your life can be stressful.

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