Tag: loss

All Stories, General Fiction

 Eulogy by Daniel R. Snyder

literallystories2014

(Editors’ note: Happy Easter to everyone.  And we thank Daniel for forgiving us (me) for misplacing his accepted story, which we are pleased to run today–LA)

The funeral is held in a large generation-spanning cemetery, with manicured lawns and polished granite headstones for the average, marble for the more-than-so, and pieces of nondescript rock hastily and carelessly inscribed for those who thought someone important enough for a marker, but not enough to break the bank.

Continue reading ” Eulogy by Daniel R. Snyder” →
General Fiction, Short Fiction

Eighteen Ninety-Seven by Pauline Shen

literallystories2014

I run my finger along the marker at the edge of our farm. Its wood is parched from time and weather. A locomotive’s soprano voice carries across the prairie. I picture that engine puffing into a station where the platform swirls with a symphony of tongues. I think of families boarding with slumped shoulders and weary eyes. I recall how we, my parents, my brothers and I, stepped onto the colonist car with its sunlit windows and faintly sweet fragrance. Around us, men snored while mothers cooed at young ones latched to their breast. I witnessed my older brother, Wasyl, rub his teary eyes as the train pulled us westward.

Continue reading “Eighteen Ninety-Seven by Pauline Shen” →
All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

The Spoils by Toni Juliette Leonetti

literallystories2014

Themes that some readers may find distressing – see tabs

***

July 7, 1917, Arras, France

It was no great shock to hear of corpses rising from their graves.

Not in this toppled world, where men turned moles. Where the fresh aged fastest, stooped and wizened in their dark holes, dreading the sun. Where a man’s next breath might kill him before he smelled hay in it. Just that, no longer the searing pineapple and peppered bleach of chlorine. Phosgene suggested merely a whiff of musty hay before the man’s lungs drowned him. Drowned, with no water in sight.

Continue reading “The Spoils by Toni Juliette Leonetti” →
General Fiction, Short Fiction

Something from Montreal by Elizabeth Rosen

literallystories2014

Each morning my mother opens the door in her housecoat and slippers and draws the newspaper inside like a prisoner drawing his supper dish through the metal slot of his prison door. She lays the paper across my father’s plate so that it will be there when he comes down for breakfast, but she never slips the rubber band off the tightly rolled bundle.

Continue reading “Something from Montreal by Elizabeth Rosen” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Girl on a Trampoline by Christopher Ananias

literallystories2014

                                                                                                                                                                                                               Night falls black and starless. His eye is drawn to the cemetery. A chill runs through him. Young sees his breath in the porch light. He takes the air into account—the change. Things will have to be shut off soon and covered, other things will have to be turned on. He hears footsteps and the slamming of cabinet doors. Young thinks, are those snowflakes? I hope not. Trinity’s rusty black Chevy Cavalier has the trunk lid standing open.

Continue reading “Girl on a Trampoline by Christopher Ananias” →
All Stories, General Fiction

The Weight of Nothing by Kip Knott

literallystories2014

Sam doesn’t like sunsets. Sunsets for Sam are a daily reminder that death is just over the horizon. Sunrises aren’t much better for Sam either because they just start the clock running again, marking time until the next sunset. Even now, as he stands outside his mother’s house smoking a cigarette while the hospice nurse tends to his dying mother, Sam is unpersuaded by the light of one of those sunsets in which people swear they see Jesus’s outstretched arms in the iridescent rays that beam between clouds. Sam just shakes his head in disgust, then turns and walks inside.

Continue reading “The Weight of Nothing by Kip Knott” →
All Stories, Fantasy

Woman With Jigsaw Puzzle by Tom Bentley-Fisher

literallystories2014

“I am the Seven Wonders of the World … I am the Endless Ocean and the Garden of Eden … I am the Mountains and Valleys and a Great Desert.” 

Gabriella has a complex system for organizing the loose pieces. What might look like a haphazard pile of small cardboard shapes is a clearly thought-out symmetrical pattern waiting to be employed in a system of elimination “far too sophisticated for even the Venezuelan postal service to figure out”, she used to tell her little boy when they sat together day after day working on a new puzzle, waiting for him to die. “It’s like DNA,” she’d say, “every piece unique onto itself.”

Continue reading “Woman With Jigsaw Puzzle by Tom Bentley-Fisher” →
All Stories, General Fiction

The Night They Brought Him Home by Jake Bristow

literallystories2014

When they brought him home that night, the lid was strewn canted off the wooden lip and jacks and queens ornamented astray around the box like a ring of fire. Someone- I do not remember who- had loaded coal into the fireplace and after some poking it begun to lick its flame at the iron grate. Ma was cold and Paul and Jane huddled around the hearth for they were cold but I suppose not as cold as him. Still, it only felt right to keep him warm.

Continue reading “The Night They Brought Him Home by Jake Bristow” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Tip Run by Alex Kellet

literallystories2014

I knew I shouldn’t have come to the tip on a Sunday, the queues are always massive. I should have come in the week, but I couldn’t be arsed. Yet another mistake I’ve made. Petrol is nearly empty as well, that’s another job I’ll have to do. Never fucking ends, does it?

Continue reading “Tip Run by Alex Kellet” →
All Stories, General Fiction

The Silence by Rehanul Hoque

literallystories2014

The dimness of the room was perfect for them both. That was how she loved it; the gentle light covered up the years that had become ingrained in her skin and the weariness in her eyes. He never asked for more light. Every Tuesday, he would drop by, say nothing, and leave a wad of money on the dresser.

Continue reading “The Silence by Rehanul Hoque” →