I meet Marla on an afternoon train from downtown to tomorrow. The seats are velvet and red, and I notice her because she has desolate eyes dusted in glitter and a smile that reminds me of a rotting cantaloupe. She is looking out the window like she wants to fuck the mountains that pass us by. I am looking at her.
Continue reading “Blossoming Neon by Robin Linden”
Trixie moves in first, plays it perfectly; she says: “where’s Gee Street?” So, the poor bastard pulls his map’s app up and Max can see he is susceptible.
She collared the man, stepping out the lift at the top of the concourse. She plays dumb, gets him to really spell it all out to her. Subtlety, I tell them: she has that in abundance.
Continue reading “Bleeding Seamonster by Stan J Wild”
Where to begin? ‘Where’ being the significant word.
Some places seem to have been created to be a home for the disconcerting and unknowable. Dartmoor was the natural petri dish for The Hound of the Baskervilles. It is so… elemental. The dirty, dark and narrow alleys of Victorian London’s East End spawned Brother Jack, whoever he was, or might still be. But other places are so mundane you can’t imagine anything beyond the norm happening there.
Continue reading “By The Colour of Our Coat Shall You Know Us By J.S. Watts”
The world had been ending all week. I heard the growl and supersonic whine of jet airplanes whooshing off Grissom Air Force Base. The rain came down all week, too. Like it would never end—even if the world did. I stood at the porch railing with my eye on the pelting silver darkness, but I didn’t see Boone. All I saw was the glare of the streetlight reflected on the wet tarmac like a false moon.
Continue reading “Relapse at the End of the World by Christopher J Ananias”
Two in the morning. The air was luminous, chalky, bloated with humidity. The smoke detector was a broken stoplight, stuck on green all night. Exhausted, jet lagged, eyeing the light, I thought of my ninety-eight-year-old grandmother Ida.
Continue reading “Super Moon in Rome by David Levine”
(Elliott the Header Pigeon is on vacation this week. PDQ Peety is filling in and is also filling himself with PDQ Pilsner.)
Introduction
I again found myself undertaking the idea of the End of Humankind. Which is not to be confused with the End of the World because that will happen a few billion years from now when the sun dies, at which time it will greatly expand and obliterate everything on out to Jupiter. Like the rabid cur shot dead by Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird a dead sun is still a dangerous sun.
Continue reading “Week 577: Can’t Teach a Shark to Kill Tofu”
The laptop glows in the dim kitchen, blue light flattening the room, turning the window into a black square that gives nothing back.
I drag the computer closer, rubber feet rasping across the table like a warning.
Resurrection Pass Overnight: Intermediate hike: Good fitness required.
The photo at the top of the event listing shows a line of hikers crossing a narrow bridge, green valley opening beneath them, the future open wide.
Continue reading “Wolf. Normal by Lynne Curry”
I stopped drinking after my younger brother Cody chose assisted death. He was paralyzed from the neck down and never able to get high again because of it. That gave him courage.
Continue reading “When I Almost Became a Monk by Harrison Kim”
Inside Saint Anthony’s Basilica in Padua, he turned to his wife and whispered that he had a “confession to make,” darting three steps toward a dark, vacant box.
“You got me,” she whispered back. She still liked his jokes, even after six years together, three as digital nomads. Pointing to her fitness tracker watch, she reminded him that they each had Zoom meetings starting in thirty minutes.
Continue reading “Confessions of a Digital Nomad by Dan Shiffman”
Extreme Adult Content – refer to the tabs at the bottom of the story
A small dark-haired boy was walking in the fog like a phantom. Lenny Coins thought about his father. How could his father do such a thing—things? But the balloons. What about those?
At the bus stop, Tom waited for Lenny and offered him a Marlboro cigarette. Like he did every morning.
“I’m only eleven. I don’t smoke, Tom.” This was in the eighties when the Marlboro Man rode the range, instead of a hospital bed. Smoking was cool, and serial killers were coming on strong.
Continue reading “The Stringer by Christopher Ananias”
literally stories 