Tag: loneliness

All Stories, General Fiction

Arrangement by Kenneth N. Margolin

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Darlene’s husband, Warren Mason, sells his lumber company for twenty million dollars. They build a forty-five hundred square foot deck house on thirty wooded acres bounded by three hundred acres of conservation land in rural North Carolina and plan to grow old amidst the trees. Five years after they build the house, while cutting down a diseased tree, Warren collapses and dies. Darlene considers moving closer to town, but cannot bear the thought of leaving the birds, the deer, the unseen creatures that forage through the woodlands and visit her backyard. At eighty-three years old, Darlene resolves to live and die in her beloved home.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Thirty Eight Special by Robert Kruger

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“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.”

—Stephen Fry

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Author’s note: My good friend, Sean, had repurposed an old decanter that once held Johnny Walker scotch, whose label he had steamed off and replaced with one of his own design. On the new label he had printed: CONVO-LOTION. In fine print, it announced: “Good for what ails you. Apply liberally.” If only those words had proven to be true.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Boots and Cats by John Tregoning

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The music thumped up the stairs towards him in the queue. I’m way too old for this he thought, edging forwards. Much had changed since last time he had been to a night club; more remained the same. Ticket checked on his phone, driver’s license scanned. Why? No one in their right mind could possibly think he was 18, his age telling in the wrinkles on his face, the receding, greying hair, the middle-aged spread. But also in invisible ways: twinges, aches, sadness.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

James and Pruina by Mitchell Toews

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James put another piece of birch on the fire, the stove hinges creaking with hot dryness as he closed and latched the door. The papery bark crackled immediately to life, curling black and sending smoke and flame up the stovepipe. On days this cold, the single-paned glass in the old cottage windows looked triple thick owing to the rime coating the inner surfaces. He reached out to touch the slick, silvery skein, feeling his fingertips numbing and a rivulet of meltwater running down and then along the underside of his hand. The bottom panes were frost jacketed, those higher less so, the hot, rising air from the stove keeping them clear.

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All Stories, Humour

See You Next Year by Mark Barlex

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Like all large things taken for granted, the North Atlantic Current knew the importance of what it did and thought long and hard before jacking it in.

An elemental system shifting oceans of warm water from Mexico to Europe slowed in protest at anthropogenic climate change then stopped altogether.

Nature’s last laugh. A landmass expecting to fry now pondered winters twenty degrees below average. No North Atlantic Current, no band of temperate air wrapping the Celtic fringe. Have another ice age, Nature seemed to be saying. Exactly what you didn’t order.

From Galway to Hamburg, people laboured through a winter of deadening snow and ice.

The next year, they stayed at home.

The year after that, they felt like staying in bed.

The year after that, they did.

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All Stories, Humour

Smile if you’re not wearing knickers by Peter Arscott

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I was pleased the butcher knew my face.

For months I’ve been coming here, wanting him to look at me, to really look at me, watching the sinews in his forearm tighten with each effortless chop of the cleaver as it neatly parts a chicken’s neck from its body, or a pink cutlet from half a ribcage. He carries himself with such grace, his every move unhurried, as if the world outside, with its fuss and hurly burly, is of no concern to a man who functions by his own imperatives, and in his own time.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Sun Rose in the West by Stephen J Kimber

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The sun rose in the west and coloured the hills. Velvet dark, not quite black… Then burnt umber. Orange-red, limpid platinum. Light gathering.

The hills became distinct; hard, dry mounds the sun reached from, taking hold of the day, making it hard and brittle too.

A party of men came back into the landscape, carrying something wrapped in canvas. They stopped at a freshly dug hole. They laid the canvas bundle down, not too gently, and unwrapped it.

It was a corpse, bones really, hard white chalky bones, dead a fair while. These the men put into the hole, one or two at a time. Then, using shovels and a mattock, they refilled the hole. It looked hard work. The last blows were struck with the mattock by the smallest, oldest man – an Aborigine – and the other men stood about, talking. They were white men.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Lives of Gadu Tom Phillips

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Everyone knew Gadu told lies. But  no matter. He was an artist, and while nobody believed he’d run a cocaine factory in the Bolivian rain forest whilst living with an uncontacted tribe or been chief stone mason during the reconstruction of Mostar’s Stari Most, his stories were hilarious.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Imaginary Friends by Gareth Vieira

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“What’s it like, being imaginary?” asked Lisa Hannigan.

She sat cross-legged on the edge of her bed, gazing down at her imaginary friends, Sally and Qney, who mirrored her posture on the carpet below, knees tucked neatly beneath their chins.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

 Unlucky by Gareth Vieira

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 Johnny Smiles was the unluckiest person in Hope County.

How unlucky? So unlucky that the town council passed a bylaw restricting him to his home. A motion that passed unanimously. A sentence he accepted without protest.

Although Johnny was an older man, most folks considered him an overgrown child. He was brilliant, in the way all children in Hope County were brilliant—a lingering side effect of the Disaster, that tainted the drinking water and perfumed the air with long-forgotten toxins.

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