Tag: loss

All Stories, General Fiction

Spraypaint on Granite by Thomas Shea

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I had just sprayed some swastikas on my father’s shiny new headstone, and was two letters into a nice double-underlined “BURN IN HELL, NAZI” when I saw her.

Her flowing white dress fairly glowed in the full moon’s light. Her skin and hair were so dark, the way she walked so light and graceful, that my first thought was “ghost”.  But disembodied spirits don’t usually carry duffel bags, or pause their spectral wanderings to shift the straps awkwardly.  Having more to fear from the living than the dead, I swung behind dad’s elaborate (now slightly moreso) stone, and hid.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Impact by Hugh Cron – Adult Content.

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“Someone once said that life prepares you for what it throws at you.

Man O’ fuck! That’s a very wise and comforting thought for coping.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Horror

Byrd’s Syndrome by Dave Henson

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Dr. Simmons studies the results of our daughter’s blood tests. “Mr. and Mrs. Jacobsen, I’ll get right to it.” Glenna leans forward. I try to squint away the words I don’t want to hear. “Your daughter has Byrd’s Syndrome.”

The weight of his diagnosis lands on my chest. My wife gasps.

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All Stories, Horror, Short Fiction

The Beach by Patrick Alton

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A wall of angry clouds threatened the morning light. William Watson hoisted the last suitcase and slammed the trunk.

“Hurry! It’s almost here!” he hollered. “We need to stay ahead of it!”

He adjusted the rearview mirror, smiled confidently at the kids, and wheeled the sedan off the apron of the driveway.

“Here we go!”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Concerto by Dorian J. Sinnott 

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Strings

Whenever she heard even the softest draw of a bow across the strings, her heart would break. She knew the music wasn’t his, but she couldn’t escape the haunting melody that repeated in her head. Over and over, without pause. A never-ending minuet bringing her to tears.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Home from the Dead by Tom Sheehan

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Earl Chatsby, six years ceased being a father for real, felt an odd distinction coming into his place of being. The newspaper for the moment loomed an idle bundle in his lap the way it stayed weighty and rolled and unread. Walls of the kitchen widened, and the room took in more air. He could feel the huge gulp of it. The coffee pot was perking loudly its 6 AM sound and the faucet drip, fixed three nights earlier at Melba’s insistence, had hastened again its freedom, the discord highly audible. Atop the oil cloth over the kitchen table the mid-May sun continued dropping its slanting hellos, allowing them to spread the room into further colors. Yet to this day he cannot agree to what happened first, the front porch shadow at the window coming vaguely visible in a corner of his eye, a familiar shadow, or the slight give-away trod heard from the porch floor, that too familiar, the board loose it seemed forever and abraded by Melba’s occasional demands to fix it.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, Fantasy, Short Fiction

The Swans by Hugh Cron

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I was too young to remember the day my Granddad past away but the night my Gran died, the swans came.

I don’t mean that she had anything to do with them, it was just that I noticed them that night.

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All Stories, General Fiction

R&R in the Poconos by Tom Sheehan

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In the quiet darkness, well past midnight, where we had been drinking for about three hours with modulated care (if you can believe it) beside someone’s massive pool in the Poconos, the narrow beam cast by a flashlight came with an alarming start down the barrel of a sawed-off rifle bound to spread pain, sac pain, heart pain, knee cap pain. The rifle and the projected flash were steady, likely in the hands of a confident man beyond rifle-range tough, the heavy voice not asking but demanding an answer: “Who the hell are you guys? Speak up quickly, one of you, before this popper gets away from me. I’m not the best shot in the world.” The qualification he added in a mimicking tone said it better than any hard-line threat: ” but I don’t have to be.”

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