Ray Dragon’s writing career had fallen hard after his first book, Loving Them Madly, in which Ray detailed the gruesome murder investigation of three young women near the Oberlin College campus with a vivid imagination; now, he was running dry. He wrote a series of travel articles for This Our World, in which he only traveled with a mouse and Google, but the magazine failed before he got a check.
Continue reading “Out There by Ed N. White”
The City found itself with a problem: what began as a natural hole in the earth where Its citizens had thrown away their evil had helter-skeltered into a voracious toxic Abyss. The City thought it could wash it away by pouring water down the hole, but that only made the evil float to the surface. It had heard about an Angel that was sent to another place to deal with the problem of evil and that that place had finally (and stupidly, so thought The City proudly as It would never be as stupid as that Other Place) destroyed The Angel and that microscopic pieces of The Angel drifted about the land wreaking vengeance.
Continue reading “The Universal Absorbent by Phoebe Reeves”
She walked down a long street, new-build red-brick configurations either side of her. She didn’t rush, she had no need for rushing, her strides slow and steady. A slight thing, tiny, some might say delicate, but she wouldn’t be stopped. Couldn’t be stopped. A row of prop-forwards would struggle against her. A decision had been made, signed and sealed in her head. She was going to do it. SHE WAS ACTUALLY GOING TO DO IT. The joy that this yielded rendered her untouchable.
Continue reading “The Glorious Both/And by Jane Houghton”
I’m in our living room and the sun is hitting the couch in your spot just how you liked it. I always wanted to close the curtains so it wouldn’t fade the fabric, but today I leave them open, like you would’ve wanted. I suppose I’m daydreaming again because I swear I hear your voice. But when I turn to look at you, your spot is still empty.
Continue reading “Cinema by Evelyn Voelter”
The sun is gone. They have a new sun now: a giant in a suit and tie floating in the sky like a zeppelin, holding a gigantic glaring mirror. They don’t know what the light source is. Maybe still the old sun. Maybe it was captured and hidden by the giant. The new sun never sets. He gives them no break.
Continue reading “Their Greenness is a Kind of Grief by Jie Wang”
Rain in Richmond was like no other, on that Wednesday in June.
David, the cab driver had parked close to the gate as I made my escape from the endless rain. As a regular, I recognised the art enthusiasts who frequented the gallery, but I had never seen him before. I had always believed art was to be publicly admired and privately dissected, in the comfort of one’s walls, an intimate ceremony, but the intrigue his face portrayed felt inviting. I was deep in thought when his gaze startled me.
Continue reading “Yellow by Jessica Aike”
I’d actually been warned about the mountain years before, in the days when we were still in the Bronx, when all we’d climbed were the stairs on Bailey Avenue. Back then the ascent was no less tricky, with the steps that crumbled and the men who sat at the top, like goats, watching until we got close and then following us through the neighborhood. In the winter there was nothing extraordinary about the cold, more dirt than snow, just enough ice to make you doubt the ground.
Continue reading “Thorong-La by Jessica Hutter”
Callahan wishes the voices would stop, but they never do. Some are soft as a caress, some are screamed out shrill. Some are wistful sighs of longing, some are determined mantras. Some are woven with glee, some are drowned in sorrow. No matter what they are, they never stop, swirling around his head, taunting him to listen, daring him to comfort, daring him to help, daring him to laugh, daring him to cry.
Continue reading “Autumn Eyes Lost, Autumn Eyes found by Anmitra Jagannathan”
Blue is the color of anxiety, the smell of despair, the sound of confusion, the taste of fear, the touch of doubt. For Jamshed, it brings back jumbled flashes of long-buried images and emotions. A neon cobalt-stained hospital wall at age five, the time he’d smashed his knee and waited endlessly for a doctor to arrive, any doctor. An inky high school test paper that he’d known he’d fail before even looking at the questions. A joyride in a stolen navy-hued Honda that had landed him and his slow-witted friend Pesi in jail for a night.
Continue reading “Blue by Selina Sheth”
His name was Maxwell Max Dugan and this is his story, but only covers those disturbing and warful years between 1941 to 1947, just seven years chockfull of battles, combat, explosions, heroic people, deadly people on a world-wide rampage, and means of salvage, at least of the souls, if nothing else.
literally stories 