Red ribbons floating on the water. A hand sticking up from the deep. A cold plunge into nothingness. The sky so large, and he so small upon the summer lake. The rise and fall of a voice calling out for help…
The dark descending; too little comfort in the night…
I seldom get invited to poker games as I never carry cards but always sad short stories. Read ’em and weep. Now that we got that awkward first sentence out of the way I can begin summarising the past week.
Sweet Surrender by our Diane focuses on a poor woman with an addiction.
Last Tuesday featured a dystopian story about something which kills off most of humanity. Speaking of a thing which kills, Kill Switch is the name of Nik Eveleigh’s story. It’s bold. Not just because I wrote in bold but the story is also bold.
Following those two stories was a comedy called A Captivating Meeting by crazily Swedish tough guy Tobias. One of those three is not true.
The Thursday story came from Vic Smith. Its speculative theme resonates in modern technology and it’s called The Conscious Coward.
Finishing the week is usually Sunday, but not here at LS. It’s the Friday story (Well technically it’s this news update, but no one reads this). Des Kelly, who will become our most prominent external author, gave us Snow On The Ground. About the complexity of love between two even complexier persons.
The Story of the Week from 9th to 13th February 2015 has been decided. It was close. How close? Like a near-sighted dyslectic would spell clothes. Because he would write very close and also spell it close. The very definition of exciting couldn’t even begin to describe how inspiring and exhilarating this Story of the Week competition was. I guess that is the definition of exciting, so yes the very definition could describe it. It was very dramatic. It started from the stomach and ran all the way up to the throat. It’s a tie. But enough about my attire. The competition was a draw.
The winners are Talk To Me by June Griffin and Thinking In Nature by Tobias Haglund
Vote for your favourites and stop voting for Tobias. It’s the equivalent of voting for the Beer Party in elections. Go ahead and click on your favourite story.
She said ‘Don’t leave me alone. I can’t cope on my own.’
I promised to stay. We drink tea, converse about nothing. She says she’d like to sleep.
I watch over her.
Professor Tomlinson was a disappointed man. He had recently achieved his life’s ambition, and already he could see it beginning to crumble.
He turned in his seat, and shouted across the laboratory to his assistant. “Hargreaves! Give me those figures again.”
Hargreaves was sitting in front of a luminous screen, looking at a series of diagrams that were filled with information. He was checking through each one in turn, collecting and collating the data. He pushed his spectacles back into place on the bridge of his nose, and repeated exactly the same numbers that he had read out a few minutes earlier.
“You’re looking for some answers. I can understand that. I can relate. Isn’t that what the hippies used to say?”
Joe’s gaze remained flat. He waited for the man to continue.
“Don’t say much do you? I’m guessing you’re all out of empathy as well as words right now but if not, I won’t keep you. Good luck in finding a tree left to hug.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell us why it started.” Continue reading “Kill Switch by Nik Eveleigh”
It’s Sunday afternoon. There’s lots of time before the game. My husband gets up and turns off the TV. ‘Let’s go for a ride.’
‘Yeah! It’s stuffy in here. Take me to the ocean, honey. Let’s catch some breezes.’ I will take a drive to the ocean any day to get out of our dreary rental. Its gray color, both inside and outside, makes it cheerless to say the least.
I was still sweating the beer out and already paying for the pains of the night before. Ten men together. Add beer. Square the testosterone levels and what you’re left with is three broken ribs, no medical insurance and an urgent care facility that looked as though its better days had not been seen by anyone still top-side of God’s green one.
It was a typical Friday night at the Planet Bar. Money rubbed shoulders with money. Ladies preened and giggled over the top of cucumber daiquiris and rosewater mojitos all the while seeking out new targets, fresh wallets. The men played their part. Laughed a little too loud when needed. Stepped out for smokes. Drank their Johnnie Walker Blues. Ordered more with practiced flickers of fingers. In the midst of this maelstrom of entitlement and low grade sexual minestrone one man patrols his bar, an oasis of calm in an otherwise…
“Miss Auder.”
“Your honour?”
“Could you please remind your witness he is in a courtroom, not in his study writing a failed novel.” Continue reading “A Few Dead Men by Nik Eveleigh”
Since we started Literally Stories last year we have been having a wonderful time. Adam, Hugh, Nik, Tobias and myself have spent hours, days, actually probably weeks, not only setting up our pretty website – which incidentally we are very proud of, but reading and discussing the stories submitted for consideration.
There have been some that we have loved, immediately and without question and all we have had to do is a quick re-format to make them work on our pages and choose a fun and relevant header image. There have been some that we have felt were not right for us for various reasons and then sadly we have had to send the horrible rejection emails (sorry). Then there are the ones, and no I’m not going to tell you which ones they were, which caused, debate, discussion, dissection and now and again just a bit of pouting!!!
I was fifteen, it was April and the summer had started early. My mother gave me ten pounds to run to the parade of shops at the bottom of the Oldpark Road to buy two steaks and some mince to fry into burgers for the dog’s dinner. Dragging myself away from the television I threw on my trainers, laced up, pocketed the banknote and walked down to the bottom of The Bone. I passed many people, they all knew me. I said hello to them all before suddenly someone was calling my name from outside the Suicide Inn.
Continue reading “The Greatest Cock that Ever Lived by David Louden”
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