I was looking out the front window, watching the snow fall, waiting for the mailman to come with my disability check. Jesus, the snow is sticking now, and my tires are bald. I needed to deposit that check today. I was out of food, running low on whiskey, and I still owed Mrs. Schmidt half the rent for this little shithole of a duplex. Fuck my life. Then, I got the call.
Continue reading “Alterations by JD Clapp”
“Follow me,” a broad-shouldered woman wearing a name tag that said Deborah told Jade.
Jade followed her through a glass door, past a man working a register, and down a hall lined with half-open boxes.
Continue reading “Hannibal, Missouri by: Amber Bell”
“ERNEST. From the soul?
GILBERT. Yes, from the soul. That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one’s own soul.”
Oscar Wilde, “The Critic as Artist”
“Under the preservation of a specific form, my soul is safe.”
Raymond Llull
Edgar Allan Poe was the kind of individual who could fall in love with a woman after seeing her for a mere few moments, or less, on the street. Dante had this feeling when he first saw Beatrice, and her later early demise compelled him to take twelve years out to compose the greatest single literary work of the Western World, a poem that still helps to define what the afterlife is (in our imaginations) eight centuries after he finished it. (And he died almost immediately after finishing it.)
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever: Eleonora and Poe by Dale Williams Barrigar”
Hi guys, another weird week and I know that they’ll get weirder. Sodding interview on the 22nd as I was an idiot (No really) as I walked out my job due to me being allergic to working with a fuckwit of a manager. It threatened me three times with disciplinary as I questioned its total unfeasible dangerous requests and time management! No fucker has ever said no to this fuckwit. I knew if I didn’t need to speak to it, I would have been fine – But long story short – Questioned it, refused to do something fucking stupid, was threatened and then walked out!!
Continue reading “Week 540 – Can’t We Swap The Dead For The Living? The Man Can Do Something Special With A Bit Of Film And A Riot At Somerset Park!”
Fluttering canvas frames a view that has tugged at Ralph Nilsen’s dreams. The mountain is dark against the star-smeared sky, curved like a sickle, beckoning. Ralph permits himself a few moments to glance upwards, to watch the spindrift pluming across the Milky Way. Moments are all Ralph has. He will not be back, not for another season, not when he is within three hundred vertical metres…
Continue reading “The Silver-Lined Ridge by Matthew J. Richardson”
a short story by T.C. Barrera
from the yet-to-find-a-home short story collection, “Counting Birds”
“You know how it is, Eli. Mickey says you gotta get to this one today. You’ve just gotta. This guy’s paying a big, and I mean, a BIG fuckin’ rush fee; that Mickey, of course, is charging for on top of the doubled fee that he was already going to charge. Mickey says, if he asks, it is due—”
Continue reading “Directions From Simi to Long Beach and All the Life In Between”
“Killing a snake is the same as having a snake”
– Joan Didion
A large, clay and plaster likeness of Saint Patrick, holding a crook and pointing at writhing snakes on the statue’s base, dominated the right side of our church. He was wheeled in face up on a donkey-cart, wenched upright by strong men when St. Patrick’s Church on Ninety-Fifth Street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, was built in 1847. “Black Forty-Seven” my dad called it.
Continue reading “Snakes in The Garden by Gerald Coleman”
Ginny was raised on violin lessons and minimal parental supervision. The combination very nearly landed her in a windowless room in the detention center in Brooklyn, and if Callum hadn’t gotten away with the dogs just when he did, even his street smarts might not have saved her.
She sat up, prim and proper, as if in counterpoint to her casually draped robes and the haphazardly pillowed sedan chair. Like for her previous sittings, she was artfully arranged in Laurent’s beautiful courtyard, the scent of flowers filling her nose. Her lover looked up from his canvas to offer a conspiratorial wink, as her loosely wrapped coverings rippled in the breeze and brushed against her skin. The slight movement of the cloth kept the glow of their lovemaking fresh, and the faint curve of her lips betrayed imperfectly hidden delight.
Continue reading “The Moment by Evan Hale”
Regular visitors to the site will be aware of Tom. He has had more stories published than any other author. Much of his work is republished writing but though he is now in his 97th year and struggling with vision loss he is still submitting new work. This is his latest submission to Literally Stories. Proof if it were needed that the soul of the writer burns brightly regardless of the passing years.
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever: The Decoration by Tom Sheehan”
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