[The contentious and jealous Goddesses and Gods have not perished or retreated to on high or sunk into the depths. I see them hidden in the faces and places I call home.]
Don’t shake dat thing like dat. You give an old man a heart attack. You make a good man go bad. You widen a brother’s eyes, open his nose, scramble his brains and put steel in his dick. You just keep that jelly rolling. Yes, you do. May the Goddess have mercy and the Gods save my sorry soul.
When my older brother and sister stopped telling me that I was adopted, they told me I was an accident. I’d believed the adoption story. I was a pale, pudgy redhead. They were perpetually tanned and lean. By the time I was a teenager, my brother and sister had left me alone with two tired parents who’d imagined being childless by now. The three of us silently ate at the kitchen table with the TV on. One night on the news, this mid-level star from a quickly-canceled pilot visited this autistic kid who called himself his “Number One Fan.” My dad laughed and said to no one in particular “If number one means ‘only.’” He didn’t get it. A-listers have thousands of fans. An A-lister never would’ve made it to this kid’s birthday party.
He had never belonged anyplace, and that realization was slowly dawning on him. Of all the places he had been in this whole land, East Coast to West Coast, border to border, foothills or river’s edge, none came charging up in his memory rugged with warmth, none touched longingly at him; no village, no harbor, no vast plain running off to the far horizon, no collection of people near such places.
When Literally Stories threw open its virtual doors on 16th November 2014 we had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for.
A lot of hard work as it turns out.
We published our first story, Post, by Jenny Morton Potts. A year later and somewhere not too far south of reading 1 MILLION words in all the wonderful stories that landed in the LS mail box, we remain very proud of our site.
Our writers. Our, ahem, eclectic oeuvre.
Continue reading “e-book: Literally Stories – The Anthology”
It has been a busy week. No denying it.
Publishing five stories on the site as is our custom plus preparing to launch Literally Stories — The Anthology: it could be said we gave Ground Control a run for its money.
I am not Major Tom. Neither am I sitting in a tin can but I am feeling a little odd today.
Strained.
Nothing that a breeze through this week’s literary line-up won’t put right.
She wore juxtaposition the way a cubist wears a turtle-neck sweater.
Continue reading “The Loneliest Goddam Midnight of Them All by dm gillis”
I asked her if she was from Russia. She said “Ukraine,” but I was too embarrassed to ask if that was in Russia so I just nodded.
She hand-washed my blouses, and I loved her for that. I wanted to share the five habits of healthy living with her, but I didn’t know her well enough at the time.
· Never eat anything bigger than your head
· Stay away from dairy
· Drink lots of water and always add a flavor packet
· Don’t eat the things you want the most
· Train for a full marathon
Atop a hill in the moors sits an old man, wrapped in his beloved waterproof. It’s red with black buttons, and only some of them are missing. He sits on a carefully laid blanket, an empty space beside him, and sips from his Thermos. His gaze never shifts from the sister hill opposite him. In the drizzle and the fog, he is waiting for the ghost.
The air is cold and the sky is free to bloom with the tiny flourishes of long forgotten light. Next to the old man is another flask, untouched. He pats the blanket, gives it a tender little rub, and says:
‘She’ll be here soon, just you wait.’
Faced with tackling an almost impossible task such as choosing my three favourite stories from all the amazing material we have published here on Literally Stories I decided the best course of action was to cheat.
I produced a long-list.
And here it is chronologically (more or less):
Listening In/Jon Green: Elsa/Tobias Haglund: Seven Days a Bag Week/Hugh Cron: Talk to Me/June Griffin: The Conscious Coward/Vic Smith: Waiting For Francis/Todd Levin: Beffroi/Tobias Haglund: 2.45 am./Todd Levin: Ella’s Ghost/Nik Eveleigh: Beach House/Diane Dickson: The Greatest Cock That Ever Lived/Dave Louden: Data/Scott David: Looking for Nipsey/dm gillis: The Woman Upstairs/Michael Mulvey : Where Cherubs Sleep/dm gillis: Reinventing Amy/Nik Eveleigh: Neon/Sharon Dean: The Woman Upstairs/Michael Mulvey: Interview With Lucifer/Frederick K. Foote: Where Cherubs Sleep/dm gillis: Black Roses/Jeffrey Miller: Apathetica/Nik Eveleigh: Joey Schaff…/Dave Louden: A Roaming Tat/Frederick K. Foote: Silent Treatments/Goran Sedlar: Underneath The Rose/Irene Allison: Swan River Daisy/Tom Sheehan: There is a Forest Here/dm gillis: First in Line/Patty Somlo: Dancing in Amsterdam/Tobias Haglund: The Plane That Flew Forever/GJ Hart.
I procrastinated but on a deeper level knew on whose chests I was going to pin gongs.
And the winners are…
Scrolling down our Twitter feed for Week 44, witnessing the variety of images that help ‘sell’ Literally Stories short stories it is impossible to ignore the diverse nature of our site.
Tumbleweed in an arid New Mexico landscape (we cheated, it’s Kansas), a church in the north of England (a church in the north of England), a few billion galaxies (yep — we bring you real galaxies folks), a landscape with crows in flight courtesy of Van Gogh and finally, my favourite beach in the whole of Hawaii, Waialua.
Not all of the above statements are entirely true and accurate.
The joy of writing eh? Lying with style. Though it might be disputed that I know all the angles it is irrefutable I have mastered none of them!
~
The last time Friday began the week Monday staged a walk-out and Midweek came out in solidarity with Monday whilst the weekend said it couldn’t give a $!£* when the week started.
On that archaic note I deliver you something fresher. Well, LS newcomer, James C Clar’s does.
literally stories 