Tag: literally stories

Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 465 – Colonel Jessup Said It Best, You Don’t Want To Be Able To Hide In Budgie-Smugglers And ‘R’ Will Always Be Their Favourite Letter.

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Here we are at Week 465.

I honestly think that January seems to be one of the longest months in the year. It drags on for ever. It is like the two minutes is to a cat when it’s food bowl is empty.

I know we don’t advocate talking animals but this little section emphasises my point:

‘It has been thirty seconds since I had food. The human is pretending to wash my dish whereas I know that they truly mean to starve me to death. I feel the life force draining from me. If I do survive this day, I shall make them pay. I will be as vocal as my weakened state allows until this matter is resolved or more likely, I die. These may be the last thoughts of me ‘Satan-Shoe Shitter!’

Continue reading “Week 465 – Colonel Jessup Said It Best, You Don’t Want To Be Able To Hide In Budgie-Smugglers And ‘R’ Will Always Be Their Favourite Letter.” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Evenings by Joanne Parsons

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SUNDAY 7:00 p.m. … Cynthia closes the door. She earned the privilege. Privacy. The quiet of the dayroom after hours. She turns on the lamp and positions the green upholstered chair, its back to the wall of windows and next to the table with the telephone, completing the ritual she’s performed every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday evening for two months.

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All Stories, General Fiction

One Known Drop by Gary Earl Ross

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It was early Thursday afternoon on Halloween. The sound of an email alert on the other side of his studio apartment made Wally Ray Tucker sit up beside the pale redhead drifting off in his bed. Their extended nooner had given them enough time for a double play, but there would be no hat trick. A lifelong friend who recently added with benefits to their relationship, CC had to get back to her office in Rockville. He nudged her, slid out of bed, and went to his desktop computer. As she washed and dressed in the bathroom, he checked his email and printed out an attachment. Then he read it. And felt his throat constrict.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Dirty Summer by Jennifer Maloney

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She comes every June to set us free. Zooms into our neat little neighborhood, somehow boiling a cloud of dust from Grandma’s swept asphalt, brakes squealing like a stunt driver. Grandma’s jaw works but she forces the corners of her mouth up, tries to smile a welcome. The car fishtails in, parks crooked as a middle finger. A brown foot, naked, toenails the color of a freshly skinned knee, heels open the driver’s door and a cardboard cup in a long-fingered hand appears. Immediately upends. A brown waterfall of liquid and half-melted ice splatters the driveway, and as it rivers down to the street I hear it: that wonderful voice. Yuck, flat, Aunt Glory announces, and summer begins.

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Fantasy, Humour, Short Fiction

Wuthering GOAT by Leila Allison

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Meanwhile, “inside” a song playing in the fantasy multiverse….

A middle aged man dressed in late 18th century finery stood pensively at a window. It was late in the evening and he was gazing across the wily, windy moors at an ethereal, yet extremely familiar young woman in a fleecy white dress. She was singing (incredibly, accompanied by an invisible orchestra) and steadily progressing toward the window in an artistic dance. He heard his name in her song, “Heathcliff.” (The lyrics also contained some character observations that Heathcliff could have done without.)

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auld author, Short Fiction

Auld Author – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith – By Leila

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“They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted.”

Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

There was a good film of the same name based on Betty Smith’s autobiographical novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which came out shortly after the book was published in 1943. But as it went during the days of the Hays Code of “decency,” much of the book could not be filmed due to content that the movie people figured viewers would be offended by. This involved a wildly over-sexed female character, pedophiles, alcoholism, antisemitism, children pulled from school to work after sixth grade, suicide, racism and persevering only for the sake of survival, for no greater aim than to prolong the misery. Some of those topics (especially the gentle father’s self destruction via the bottle) were addressed passingly while others were let alone.

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Editor Picks, Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 464: Happily Never After and Antisocial People Have Feelings Too

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Happily Never After

I cannot help but knock feel good fiction. It reminds me of Heaven, which no one has ever described to my satisfaction. From what I have seen, Heaven looks like an eternal installment of Songs of Praise (I thought the USA had a monopoly in the department of hokey religious programming, but the UK has once again exposed my ignorance).

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All Stories, Fantasy

Swirls by Laura Shell

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She moves her arms, her hands, her fingers as if she’s floating in water. From an index finger, a swirl begins. It’s the air. Concentrated. Rotating clockwise. An inch in diameter. It bends all the light and all the colors in the room, yet remains clear.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Historical, Short Fiction

Hartshead Moor Services – Westbound by Matthew Roy Davey

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The service station was different. While it was busy, it was quiet: a gentle hum of conversation and the odd rattle of cutlery and crockery. Everything was calm. There was no panic, no urgency, no pain.

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All Stories, Horror

The Little Red Who Survived by Aleks McHugh

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Now first off, thank you for caring to listen. Or I presume so.I waited a long time to speak about the conspiracy that tried to bend me to its will and deny me mine, starting with my right to self-pleasure at the age of 12, to be master of my own body.

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