Tag: loss

All Stories, General Fiction

Always Remember to Shift by Jessica R. Clem

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My mother’s cadence on the bike has always been impressive. She can seamlessly glide from first gear to third without breaking her stride. The sound of her chain effortlessly shifting sounds like fingers snapping a melody. We ride together on a winding dirt road. We are going incredibly fast considering her mountain bike is a heavy beast. The tires are wide and fat. But it is a cheerful red color. It is the color of tricycles and little wagons. Though she is only thirty-six, it is odd to see her on something that calls to youth.

Especially since she is dying as we ride.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Boundless Growth by Simo Tchokni

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‘And all of this is replicated across twenty datacenters.’

With a flourish, Davide draws a large rectangle around the messy, sprawling diagram he’s drawn on the whiteboard. He turns around. ‘Any questions?’

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All Stories, General Fiction

Scratch by Tom Sheehan

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In the whole of Riverside Cemetery this was the one stone that had slipped its mooring, leaned not forward into the new millennium, but backward, into the one passed by mere years ago, as if saying it was tired of all the holding on. In one instant the scribed name was home with me: Dumont Pulsifier, an old pal from my neighborhood, but everybody, including his mother and his dead father while he was here, had called him “Scratch.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Summer Nightsweats by Shane O’Neill

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Three months have passed since the death of my wife. It has been a long summer, hot and unbearable. My only solace is knowing that it will be my last. I sweat incessantly. Others thrive in the sickly heat. Oh, that the rain would rinse the smiles from their faces. I keep my ghastly body hidden from the outside. Sometimes I cough. Recently more and more. But I rarely dwell on this. Hacking out a thick wad I get on with my business of living and dying. It is all I know.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Horror

Haunt Me Like You Hate Me by Alex Sinclair

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“Men are gold, and women are white cloth. Gold, once sullied, can be cleaned and polished, while white cloth, once soiled and torn, can never be clean again.”

 Khmer proverb

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All Stories, General Fiction, Writing

Residual Grief of The Dead Soldiers Mother by S.A. Cavanagh

literallystories2014

When we received this work we were undecided what to do with it. We knew that we wanted to publish such a powerful and emotional piece of writing but, in fairness, it isn’t what we would normally class as a story. I will be honest and say that it moved me to tears.
Anyway, fate took a hand. We were scheduling this week at the time and when better to publish this than Remembrance Day. 

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

Paperboat by Kenrick Pinto

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The last paper boat. At least Herman hoped it was, watching it float away. Transported by the Danube to a world far from his own. A world without weapons and bombs. Without destruction. Where dreams didn’t die, where they weren’t shattered. Where men lived. He watched as it carried a tale of love, of loss, of grief and of war. Is that why they call it the Black sea, he wondered. All emotions coalescing to form a black, murky mass. Was the sea black inside, hiding behind a shade of blue, flowing nonchalantly. Like the people around him, hiding their sadness behind a smile. It will all be alright, they said. To others, to themselves. That it was destiny. There was nothing they could do, and the world would return to normalcy. It had to. Someday.

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All Stories, Romance, Short Fiction

 Sexual Healing by Adam Kluger

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romantic fiction sexual healing

It wasn’t a lifetime but 37 years was a good stretch of time.

After a particularly vivid dream where the two spoke again finally, and connected intimately in the lobby of the apartment building he grew up in, Craig Bugowski woke up happy, and fished for his iPhone.

Karrie M. was on his list of Facebook friends.

She had accepted his FB invite two years prior.

Her birthday was a month ago. She was a Gemini.

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